Brawl v Melee (ft chillindude and g-regulate) Debate

[Jazriel]

This is honestly pathetic. I have no disrespect towards you TheManaLord, but the one statement you said validates your incompetence.

You said that in melee you can "turn up the tech skill to win" (a paraphrase, I'm not going to read over your garbage again).

So, you're telling me, that in a competitive level game, where money and time spent of one's life is on the line, the only thing that matters is the ability to press buttons in a precise and speedy fashion?

So you know what, I'm going to do something and take all your money. I'm going to train a monkey to powershield perfectly. Powershield on a level of Perfect Control. After I do that, I'm going to teach the monkey to do one other thing, how to Jab. So what my monkey is going to do is powershield all your attacks and jab you until you're at 300% and then he'll grab -> uthrow you.

Have fun losing all your money and putting melee down. FEAR MY MONKEY!


Respone-to-pathetic-argument-aside, you're making a mistake that everyone else is making. No surprise considering that the average person is ******** and has no idea what they're talking about.

I'm going to explain my entire argument in one nifty comparison:

Brawl has been out for what, a month and a half? So, let's take the level that everyone is at now. Got it? Good.

Now go back in time to when melee was a month and a half old, and lets compare the metagame to that of Brawl's.

Have I made my point? Do I really need to say that THE GAME HASN'T BEEN OUT LONG ENOUGH FFS.



As to Yuna's example, seriously man, grow up. Shieldhopped aerials? Oh no, you're playing people who have never seen it before and haven't spent time practicing it.

I can think of one (extremely technical) answer to that: Powershielding.

They don't even need to attack. All what they do is SH an airdodge. Hell, all what they need to do is dash at you. If you shieldhop an aerial, powershield it and go for the utilt/usmash. If you stand there, they just need to dash grab. If you spot dodge, all they need to do is wait and go for a grab.

Stop putting up stupid examples of fighting people who don't know what you're doing. It took years for melee to become as developed as it is. I, a noob, just looked on the internet and started learning the AT's. It was that simple. If there was ever a move I needed clarification on, I would just watch a combo video where it was put to use in an extremely ingenious fashion.

Brawl is a new game, different stuff is happening, it's not melee. Stop trying to say all this bull**** about how brawl has "less mindgames" or is "less technical". It's been out for 1.5 months.

Grow up people.

 

[TheManaLord]

EDIT: edited in that this is a respone to azn since there was a post in between ours

post

Don't take that onslaught comment literally, it doesn't mean it's unstoppable, it just means you can tighten the screws, step the speed up, and really hammer down, it allows you to put pressure on. There shouldn't be an unbeatable offensive approach, there isn't in melee. Many people in competitive fighting game communities think that even melee is too defensive. I agree with you that it should be balanced, but I feel melee had a much better offense defense ratio than brawl does.

Auto cancelling is a technique in every smash game. There is auto cancelling in melee as well. It's NOT a technique it's just a game mechanic. Do an aerial way up in the sky it finishes before you land, do we call that something? No, it's the same thing! And yeah, I agree, but due to the physics of melee it's easier fastfall and hit the proper part of the shield to avoid a shieldgrab, in both games if a fast attack hits early at a high or middle part of the sheild it will be sheildgrabbed. Auto cancelling limits the area of attack you can hit with, since you have to perform it a certain way. L-cancelling can happen whenever since it always applicable.

 

[R i p]

I'm disappointed that the melee vs brawl debate hasn't died down and a suggestion would be to just make it a sub-forum.

TheManaLord I have to say I'm not a fan of what you are doing. If you were going to post beaten and old debates and one from another forum at that, you could have at least been intellectual about it. Instead, I'm seeing the typical childish run around that plagues this community and perhaps all online communities. I even see you claim your opponent is at an elementary comprehension level. Need I say more?

Did you really think that this forum was in need of your gamefaqs debate? Like it was something unique that hasn't hit this scene? With comments like "Looks like I'm getting infamous for my post format ;-;" this sounds like you are trying to toot your own horn. To this I say "stop it", you aren't helping yourself or other people.


As for my opinion on the matter, it's hard to debate Melee isn't more technical than Brawl at this point in time. It's also fair to say that there's a good chance that Brawl will never be, even with new discoveries.

However, I'm willing to say Brawl will still be a decent competitive game. It has its issues though.

An issue nowadays is the fact how weak approaching is. This is Brawl's one great weakness. It allows camping and puts a lot of power in the hands of projectile spammers. Combos I couldn't care less about. If Brawl is able to overcome this weakness, it will go from a decent to a good competitive game. It still probably wouldn't surpass Melee.

It has other qualities that will make it rewarding and interesting to follow through with, at least for me.

 

[TheManaLord]

This is honestly pathetic. I have no disrespect towards you TheManaLord, but the one statement you said validates your incompetence.

You say this, but your ENTIRE post is filled with quick insulting jabs, a condescending attitude, a belittling tone, and generally the exact opposite of what you said you were going to do. That's pretty mature of you, I think when you say something you should kind of stick with it, you know? It just shows the calibur of your argumentitive skills, they're low enough to claim pureness and do the exact opposite. I think you should listen to your own advice in the end... but I'm not going to treat you the same way you treated me. I'm going to respond to you as if I respect your opinion, because I do. Everything you said is disrespectful and it really does nullify arguments. I doubt you've ever written any serious argument that's been graded let alone published. Because with cheap insults you'll never get anywhere.

You said that in melee you can "turn up the tech skill to win" (a paraphrase, I'm not going to read over your garbage again).

So, you're telling me, that in a competitive level game, where money and time spent of one's life is on the line, the only thing that matters is the ability to press buttons in a precise and speedy fashion?

No, I never said that, ever. You can turn up your technical skill to put more pressure on your opponent, you can step it up. There is NOTHING precise in Melee's technique, everything is thought of on the fly, you have to react to DI and percentages. Very little is concrete, what is, cannot be stepped up. The ability to try harder is something in every game ever. You can't have technical skill and be devoid of mindgames and how to apply it. It's about application.

Brawl has been out for what, a month and a half? So, let's take the level that everyone is at now. Got it? Good.

Now go back in time to when melee was a month and a half old, and lets compare the metagame to that of Brawl's.

Have I made my point? Do I really need to say that THE GAME HASN'T BEEN OUT LONG ENOUGH FFS.

The smash series has been around for many years, and the competitive community has played it to death. The thing is, we KNOW what to look for. Many of us play other competitive fighters. It's not usual for everything competitive to be abruptly dropped from a game in a series, especially one so unconventional as smash. For this reason I AM giving it leeway, there's no way to debate projections, so we only debate with what we have. That's not unreasonable at all seeing as how most of the inherent and obvious techniques have been REMOVED. There's no reason to denounce that.

 

[Nova X81]

I hate debates like this, because they're stupid and biased. Not that my input will be any different, but I feel the need to drop my two cents in the bucket.

Comparing Melee to Brawl is like comparing a skater punk to a wise old man in a wheelchair. One has all the moves, speed, and enough brains to get by. The other has lost his edge, but he still has the wheels to move with and enough brains to put the skater in his place whenever the skater tries to start something. Is one superior? Not necessarily. In translated terms, is brawl a better game? Let's consider some points first.

The physics engine in Brawl is a core preventive measure against the lightning-fast playstyle of Melee. The removal of L-cancelling was just a continuation of that. For the most part, the competitive community has received this as an overall bad thing, spouting ideas such as "the noobs will be just as good as us now," "they took the competitive edge out," or even "they ruined the entire game with this." Are any of these true? No. All these arguments can be easily broken apart. There's little point in taking the time to do so, as ManaLord has admittedly avoided many of these simple arguments against Brawl's state as a competitive game. But there's more to this than is let on really.

Brawl can easily be a highly competitive game. The problem that people are having such that they can't see this is that they are attempting to compete in Brawl the same way they competed in Melee: a high concentration of technical skill applied to enough mindgames to fool your opponent into your gameplan. Brawl cannot be played this way, and players that remain to focus on Melee-style gameplay will not do well in a Brawl setting against skilled Brawl players. That, or they'll play Metaknight and do fine. But let's avoid character-selection insults until the game's been out a little longer ^^;.

Brawl differs from Melee in a variety of ways, but you can break it down to a few central points:

1. Brawl is slower than Melee
2. There are less game techniques (not character-specific) (yet, but most likely for the greater lifespan of this game) that can be abused to gain a significant advantage over your opponent
3. There are more characters
4. For the most part, a move's lag is directly dependent on the move's potential power (with a few notable exceptions).
5. There are more uncontrollable random factors, that are slowly being proven to be weighed against the winner

If we look at these points directly, Brawl appears to be an inferior game. But you can't simply play this game on the surface like you could melee -- you must play a much deeper game. What I'm saying is that on a certain level of gameplay, namely the "meta-game" or "mindgame" level, Brawl is in reality a deeper game than Melee. I'll explain my angle through the points of difference I just made.

1. Brawl is slower than Melee
In a ground-speed comparison, Brawl is slower than Melee on an insignicant level (likely less than 5%). Where Brawl altered the speed of the game was in the air, and in the gravity. Gravity is clearly lower, which allows for more Aerial combat at a slower pace, alters (in a way that is more difficult) the timing to auto-cancel a move onto the ground, and changes how you must approach an enemy from the air. Coupled with the removing of L-cancelling, the Air is no longer the safe-haven of approach it was in Melee. In Melee, almost any character had at least a half-decent approach from the air, due to ability to speed up the move by timing the hitbox to come out right as they could auto-cancel it, or landing the move high and removing 50% of the landing lag with an L-cancel.

In Brawl, Air approaches are significantly more dangerous, due to the fact that you will have at least some lag upon hitting the ground, and the increased power of grabs to pull someone out of the air, including tether grabs that were once restricted to ground targets only. What does all this mean? It might even sound like I'm talking in support of Melee at this point. No. What this means is that the Melee-style approach of "leading with your strongest foot" has been removed, and with Brawl you must make a more strategic decision. Captain Falcon can't simply fly in with his electric knee out, cancel it's lag, and then repeat it until his opponent is forced to drop his shield (or his shield fails). In a way, you must bait your opponent into the moves you want him to do -- you must have as much control over your opponents actions as they do. Technical skill has been replaced with mindgames, and the importance of how fast you input commands has been replaced with a newfound importance on how well you can trick your opponent into doing what you want them to before they figure out your setup.

2. There are less game techniques (not character-specific) (yet, but most likely for the greater lifespan of this game) that can be abused to gain a significant advantage over your opponent
While I touched on this a little more than I wanted to in the last paragraph, there's still a little more to say on this topic. In Melee, every character could wavedash, L-cancel, and dashdance. With the exception of Wavedashing, both of the other techniques allowed for a fairly standard timing on how fast one could perform something. Wavedashing, while always the same "speed," had varying distances and uses with different characters, making it more of a character-specific measure, just like their weight or speed. This fact, combined with the idea that stages (the ones used in tournament play, at least) were usually fairly small, put a heavy importance on the maneuverability of a character. Melee Fox could reach almost any point on any Neutral stage in less than 3 seconds under the control of a skilled technical player. Falco, Sheik, and Marth could reach any point on the stage in short order (likely not as fast as Fox could), but had options to limit their opponents maneuverability (Falco in particular) with high range attacks or high priority weapons. The game broke down to how well one could maneuver: this provided a set list of matchups. The worst matchups in the game were ones where the weaker character could be prevented from manipulating maneuverability at all: Sheik v Pikachu, Sheik v Bowser, Marth v Bowser.

Brawl's reduced importance on movement speed has solved this issue in an interesting way. Though the game is overall slower, certain characters can still outmaneuver other characters with great ease. However, due to this reduced speed, the "victim" character now has new options. By outthinking his opponent, one can easily assault them out of their "advantageous" position and take the upper hand. Through enough meta-gaming, one could even have their opponent almost anywhere they want them for the attack they want to do.

Brawl has altered where the most important aspect of the game lies. In Melee, it was almost purely Maneuverability combined with Control over your opponent's maneuverability. In Brawl, it is much closer to Attack Speed (not movement speed) in combination with spacing, while controlling your opponents position through mindgames. You do not play brawl fast: you play brawl smart. I know how dumb that sounds, but it is the most inherent truth in this game. Playing brawl as fast as you played melee will get you nowhere.

3. There are more characters
More characters leads to less balance. This much will always be true. That being said, I think they've done a fairly good job of balancing 39 characters -- considering how poorly some games with under 15 characters are balanced. Analyzing all the characters here would be improper for this argument, and largely a waste of space, but something must be said about at least one situation, and that is Metaknight. It is a common idea anymore that Metaknight is the best character in the game, and I will agree that he is very good -- but he can be dealt with.

Some will use Metaknight alone as a reason to refute the entire argument against maneuverability and speed: Metaknight has a high range of maneuverability, can limit his opponents move choices, and is quite speedy, and does very well. But this is more of a technical factor than anything: he only does well if you attempt to outspeed or outmaneuver him. He can be easily dealt with by using brawl-techniques against him, who is a character much more set towards a melee playstyle (which is probably why so many people are doing well with him in the early months of playing the game). The two best examples for my argument are Marth and Lucario, both of which do well against Metaknight. They both have a natural advantage in spacing against Metaknight, and a good choice of high attack speed moves. Granted, Metaknight has better attack-speed decisions, but he does not have the spacing options either of these characters do. Combined with mindgames on both players part, it will come down to a spacing battle, which either Marth or Lucario will win easily against Metaknight.

What does this mean for my argument from Melee to Brawl? Little, actually. But what it does mean is that a clearly-defined tier list will be harder to actualize than the one for Melee was. Melee was a game with one centric value that lead most of the tier list: maneuverability (I know, I'm throwing that word around a lot, but there aren't many other words I can think of that fit the kind of thing I'm talking about). Brawl's tier list will end up being a weighed list, based on Attack-speed and Spacing, not necessarily movement speed. Granted, it's nigh impossible to work mindgames into a tier list, as that is very player specific, but perhaps a little will rub off in the tier list as players learn how to manipulate certain character's moves. Of course, the tier list is built off of tournament results, but it is likely that the results will shape to match that of the game's natural order of attack-speed/spacing, just as melee's ended up being shaped towards character mobility.

4. For the most part, a move's lag is directly dependent on the move's potential power (with a few notable exceptions).
This is possibly the most drastic change between Melee and Brawl, as Melee's move lag was largely uniform due to auto-cancelling being easier and the existence of L-cancelling. This also represents one of the only major changes to the technical play of Brawl from Melee. Melee allowed for the widely accepted method of spamming a character's most powerful moves until they worked. When one couldn't combo their opponent, this strategy worked nearly as well. Brawl has removed this via a much harsher knockback/damage penalty on repeated move use ("stale moves"), with approximately 12 other moves required in between power moves in order to "recharge" them. This breaks down on a technical level to a Brawl player not being able to simply assault their opponent with Marth's F-Smash or C-Falc's Knee until they die from it. Players must now pick and choose their moves in order to build their opponent up to a final life-ending hit.

With the lessened hit-stun in Brawl preventing extensive combos (a good thing, in my personal opinion, though I know that many will disagree on that aspect), landing all these strategically placed hits will be much harder than it was in Melee: but this is where Meta-gaming and extensive mindgames come in. I've already covered more than I needed to on that topic, so that is all I will say on that for now. Regardless, the change in the lag : power ratio along with the increased penalty for repeated use forces the players to use a much more diverse move pool if they hope to play successfully, leading to more need for meta-gaming.

5. There are more uncontrollable random factors, that are slowly being proven to be weighed against the winner
This is possibly the hardest point to argue against in Brawl's favor. Things such as tripping have been implemented, and already shown (I will add a reference when I find one, I can't be troubled to look it up; I know they've been experimenting with it in the back room through connections) to be weighed in the loser's favor. As in, the player winning the match will trip more than the player losing. Is this fair in any way? No. But as has already been stated in this thread, fighting games are not always, if ever, fair. But in another way, tripping is just a test of the player.

There are things you can do about tripping, in both a direct and meta-game way. In the meta-game aspect, you can avoid all situations where tripping would punish you harshly. The problem is... that's nearly impossible. Almost any situation can be punished against you if you trip. This is not the way to deal with this.

However, tripping can be cancelled with an extremely fast shield/roll. I've seen it done with multiple characters played by multiple players. Am I very good at it? No. Do I know the timing? Not precisely. But it appears to be a very tight window after the trip animation begins. If anything, the fact that tripping can be cancelled is one last remaining call out to the technical skill of the player, since cancelling it requires amazing reaction speed combined with the technical ability to make the cancel into your advantage.

From another angle, on a statistical level, since the trip animation is largely invulnerable, it has the exact same odds to help you dodge an attack as it does to land you into one. Am I saying tripping is good or not annoying? Hell no. I hate tripping. But it has the same probability to help you as it does to hurt you.



All in all, Brawl can be just as competitive as Melee: it is simply a different kind of competitive, one on the opposite side of the fighting-game spectrum. Melee had to be played with a combination of technical skills and mindgames. Most other fighting games rely solely on the technical skill of the player. Brawl, meanwhile, has presented to us a game that requires little technical skill, but a very smart playing style from the player in order to be played well. I would go so far as to give Brawl a sub-genre of "strategy" in a competitive aspect.

But worry not my friends; players who sucked at melee will still suck at Brawl. Having been to both tournaments and anime cons in the last few months (the two most opposite settings I can think of for Competitive vs Casual play), I can testify that it is still easy to defeat low-skill (mindgame OR technical) players without even coming close to losing a stock. The only way casual players have come closer to competitive play is with their ideas: even at Tekkoshocon (Pittsburgh Anime Con), the players wanted items turned off. xD ;;

 

[KernelColonel]

Brawl is going to be competetive because there are more people digging it. I'm digging it, for sure.

Every other semantic you could debate about superior physics engines or technical skill or movement limitations will all be moot points, unfortunately.

Melee is not more competetive. You can say it's deeper, but more people will play Brawl competetively. They almost have surpassed Melees's players already.

I'm sure there will still be Melee side tournaments though. It's not all over for you Melee vets.

 

[NoVaLombardia]

Y'know, i think these Melee vs Brawl debates are mostly (not all) Melee supporters.

They probably really don't care if Brawl becomes a competitive franchise, as long as large scale Melee tournaments (evo and such) and the community still stays alive and strong. Because they feel threatened by that, it boils up inside and start making intelligent posts (probably induced with some worry) in order to diminish the Brawl scene.

I'm a melee supporter and i mostly feel this way. Although i never take part in any Brawl vs Melee debates in terms of game design, because i think it's silly to argue over / i might screw up and look stupid (which i probably am doing right now?)

Oh well.

 

[Meta Ryu]

"No, I never said that, ever. You can turn up your technical skill to put more pressure on your opponent, you can step it up. There is NOTHING precise in Melee's technique, everything is thought of on the fly, you have to react to DI and percentages. Very little is concrete, what is, cannot be stepped up. The ability to try harder is something in every game ever. You can't have technical skill and be devoid of mindgames and how to apply it. It's about application. " - Manalord


Then why can't we just accept that brawl does that BETTER?

 

[battousai555]

Premise 1# - Brawl is not as deep as melee
Teching, wave dashing etc. and alllll the other things that made melee deep and great are gone. Battles are not so much about massive time and effort into comboing as they are actualy gameplay of said characters. Gameplay is slower (or at least feels slower in general) and characters are more floaty.

Though I agree that melee is the deeper and MUCH better game, since when was teching removed?

 

[shadydentist]

I do like both games, but I feel that high level Melee play is more rewarding than high level Brawl play. Admittedly, this is entirely subjective, but in Melee pulling off a 0-death combo felt fantastic, while Brawl doesn't have an equivalent at the moment. I mean, I guess the Ice Climbers have their throw combo, but its not the same.

 

[SynikaL]

Since this is just another thread coursing through an inevitable destination to nowhere, I'd just like to address Chillin's point about aerials quickly:

at first i was also dismayed at the removal of l-cancelling... but let's think about it. how is it fair that extremely strong air moves also become extremely fast due to l-cancelling? in brawl, a move's animation determines its lag time upon hitting the ground, which actually makes a lot more sense. air moves aren't as overpowered as they were in melee. you cant just sit there with falcon shorthopping knees repeatedly anymore, because the knee is really strong and thus has landing lag.

I think its the Smash community's lack of experience with fighting games in general that causes them to continue to be completely oblivious of the fact that Super Smash Brothers: Brawl is the only fighting of conventional knowledge to ever impose lag on aerial attacks.

No other fighting game imposes such an inane feature. While you may have made peace with the concept of Heavy aerials lagging in the context of Brawl, when I do a Jumping Fierce in 3rd Strike with Ken, there's no arbitrary lag.

And yet, a complexed frame game still exists in more traditional fighters and it existed in Melee (just wasn't pronounced in that game's high-level meta-game).

Just one of the many aspects of Brawl's architecture that make it quantifiably limited in relation to Melee and other fighting games.

I'm not expecting this post to change any minds (or this thread). Just a detail that's been nagging me for a while. It seems like this community will never become smart enough to realize what it takes to move forward.


-Kye

 

[Yuna]

Brawl is going to be competetive because there are more people digging it. I'm digging it, for sure.

Casual players digging the game =/= Players willing to invest time and money into tournaments

To play in tournaments, you have to endure grueling training (least you shoot for never even getting out of pools), travels long distances (sometimes out of country) and spend money (food, entrance fees, moneymatches).

Just because X thousands of casual players like Brawl and will play each other over Wi-Fi and try to beat their friends does not mean they'll be willing to even invest time into becoming actually good with the game (as in finding out the best strategies, studying (as opposed to just watching) videos, spend times on the forums researching things with others).

 

[Ryuker]

Awesome post

You worded exactly what I have been thinking since brawl was released in japan and after playing it for the first day. This is why I don't want too say brawl is worse then melee or vica versa( I have had it since a week after it's release so I spent quite some time with it). I also haven't seen enough evidence yet of camping breaking this game. All I see is that I need to be more precise when filling in the open spots and when I attack and want to follow up I can't just run and grab again but if my oppponent does a attack to hit me first or a air dodge or jump away I need to anticipate that. In that sense it really isn't that different from melee yet. It sometimes feels deeper then melee but I haven't adjusted enough. Of course one can also camp and I have hardly played vs those kind of people but vs ike for example I am already punished severly on laying back and just rushing in. However this does slow down the game since players need to be cautious and exploiting a few openings isn't getting you the stock just yet. So matches take longer.

For the folks who want to spam arials all day try diddy or something his bairs are amazing.

I used to fence and in that sport anticipating your opponent next move was key. If you wanted to do good you had to atleast anticipate 5 moves ahead. I used to always falled into someone's defence when fencing (fencing is very defence based) and when I started melee I noticed I made the same mistakes. The way I think of that now is like a turnbased battle. I do my move > opponent does move so on. That's like chess. However smash differs in that you still take turns ( due to lag or ending your moves after peforming them for example) but it's not absolute. Instead both players decide when they make their move(like rock paper scissors only more complex and both aren't forced to act at the same time). Ofcourse you are still fighting each other so when the first player makes a move the other can't chose to do everything anymore and expect to get away with it. This is when the second players options have been reduced and is forced to act in a way. Ideally vs someone you don't know you want them to make the first move at the wrong time so you can punish them on it. Versus good players you do know though you want to be the first to hit and have the momentum of the match in your favor.
This is true for any fighting game and for melee aswell ofcourse but it's also true for brawl. I haven't seen evidence yet of a situation were I was completely incapable of attacking or defending. I still take my turns and have to play my cards right. It's different then melee but the principle is the same. Just different execution. I can still trick my opponents. I can still punish them on the wrong decission ( and vica versa). I can't always follow up with a awesome combo anymore but after a throw I can atleast shorten the distance and pressure my opponent into something else. I noticed with brawl that I overlook stuff often and when I for example try to attack that it's not the games fault but my fault that I'm not hitting my opponent. They simple weren't in a position yet to be hit yet I assumed they were.

So I'm wondering now why all the players are resorting to camping. Is it cause they are incapable of finding the correct way to advance or are they taking control of the stage by throwing projectiles all the time. If the latter is true then they are actually being offensive but the one who isn't camping isn't punishing them on the openings after spamming a projectile or isn't advancing at all in which case he/she deserves to be spammed. If the first is true then I think it's just a phase and it will pass once players start figuring out how to break the defence. Ofcourse when you have projectiles at your disposal and your opponent doesn't advance you keep doing that same thing till your opponent forces you to do other wise. Thats true for any fighting game. Like the fireball in streetfighter. So when I first played brawl and played pit I tested if I could just do f-b all the time and get away with it. But thats not the case since the move has been balanced and after a while I was being punished on it. So is snake really that broken or are we just adapting to his new style? The same question goes for pit and toonlink R.O.B and any other top tier candidate that is said to be broken.

Which leads me too the other argument we hear alot about brawl that sakurai intends it too be a fun party game. I'm still in doubt of that since there is such attention to detail in characters moves so on that it's just hard to believe he spent all that time for players who only throw some items at each other. That just doesn't make sense to me. Besides that the cpu play very similar to certain melee strategies we used and I wonder if he actually spent some time researching the melee meta game ( if only for a little time).

This is getting too long and there's too many questions unanswered. Let's just give this game atleast a year to fully develop it self while not forgetting about melee ( the two can easily co exist at large tourneys.) Anyone who makes up his mind now has obviously not seen enough of this game yet or is just more in favor of melee's gameplay in which case they have every right to but that doesn't justify claims as brawl is a bad game.

In response to Yuna who claims that this game has been deemed bad as a competitive game and who tries to justify by saying everyone who was good at melee is saying it is a bad game I ask how long were professors convinced that the earth was flat. There was no argument and you were a complete lunatic if you were to fight that claim cause come on we've been living on it for so long it must be true. Yet they were proven wrong and if I were to claim that the world is flat now I'd be called a lunatic. Don't jump to conclusions....

 

[Yuna]

You worded exactly what I have been thinking since brawl was released in japan and after playing it for the first day. This is why I don't want too say brawl is worse then melee or vica versa( I have had it since a week after it's release so I spent quite some time with it). I also haven't seen enough evidence yet of camping breaking this game.

That's because you're watching the "wrong" people play. Watch videos or lesser players in Melee and you won't see L-canceling. I gues L-canceling just wasn't that important in Melee, then.

Watch videos of lesser players of Guilty Gear XX#Accent Core. No Romantic Cancels, gatling combos or even basic shielding of Lows/Overheads. I guess all of those things are useless.

Take a look at the game objectively. How it works, how the character works, the game engine, game mechanics. Can you honestly say you don't see camping dominating the competitive aspects of the game?

All I see is that I need to be more precise when filling in the open spots and when I attack and want to follow up I can't just run and grab again but if my oppponent does a attack to hit me first or a air dodge or jump away I need to anticipate that. In that sense it really isn't that different from melee yet. It sometimes feels deeper then melee but I haven't adjusted enough. Of course one can also camp and I have hardly played vs those kind of people but vs ike for example I am already punished severly on laying back and just rushing in. However this does slow down the game since players need to be cautious and exploiting a few openings isn't getting you the stock just yet. So matches take longer.

You're playing the wrong characters (characters with good approach are limited in numbers), the "wrong way" or you're just not that good if you're letting Ike consistently destroy you. He's good but he's not that good. And he gets easily camped to death.

The best characters in the game won't be leaving many openings while the rest will. This is why it's unbalanced when it reaches the upper tiers. Almost no one has a good approach but everyone can camp quite well. So either you'll play a character who can do both and dominate or you'll pretty much be forced into camping his approaching will lead to pain.

For the folks who want to spam arials all day try diddy or something his bairs are amazing.

And then I'll just go Marth and Fair you to the face from my shield.

I used to fence and in that sport anticipating your opponent next move was key. If you wanted to do good you had to atleast anticipate 5 moves ahead. I used to always falled into someone's defence when fencing (fencing is very defence based) and when I started melee I noticed I made the same mistakes. The way I think of that now is like a turnbased battle. I do my move > opponent does move so on. That's like chess. However smash differs in that you still take turns ( due to lag or ending your moves after peforming them for example) but it's not absolute. Instead both players decide when they make their move(like rock paper scissors only more complex and both aren't forced to act at the same time).

Smash is not like chess... at all. Melee was still about anticipating your opponent. Heck, even when approaching, you could anticipate them and bait them into making a mistake and then punish them severely.

In Brawl, even if you manage to anticipate what they're going to do and punish them, the punish won't really hurt that much because of the new game physics. There will be no comboing and most importantly of all: There will be no comboing in KO moves.

So even if they leave themselves open at 160%, if you can't throw out a KO-move fast enough, all you can do is whack them so they fly off without actually killing them and then it'll be all about the new nerfed-down edgeguarding.

This is true for any fighting game and for melee aswell ofcourse but it's also true for brawl. I haven't seen evidence yet of a situation were I was completely incapable of attacking or defending.

Since when is this ever an issue? Except when you play as Ganondorf against someone who can spam projectiles with stun on Final Destination or some other big flat stage.

I still take my turns and have to play my cards right. It's different then melee but the principle is the same. Just different execution. I can still trick my opponents. I can still punish them on the wrong decission ( and vica versa). I can't always follow up with a awesome combo anymore but after a throw I can atleast shorten the distance and pressure my opponent into something else. I noticed with brawl that I overlook stuff often and when I for example try to attack that it's not the games fault but my fault that I'm not hitting my opponent. They simple weren't in a position yet to be hit yet I assumed they were.

A lot of throws are actually punishable if you try to run up to them with an attack.

It's the game's fault that you can't do much even on hit. On block, the game promotes the one who blocked. In a game where there's almost no High-Mid-Low guessing game, where you can block all hits the same way (except against shieldstabbing), you can now Powershield/Perfect Shield really easily. Even if you don't you suffer no hitstun.

So you already can't try to mindgame people by throwing out a Low instead of a Mid and have them block it "the wrong way". If they block it at all, if your move lags in any way, you're eating a punishment. This severely limits your already limited arsenal of approach moves.

We're limited to poking and poking and poking and even some characters' pokes are unsafe. Ike's jabs can be rolled, Up B and even Naired.

So I'm wondering now why all the players are resorting to camping. Is it cause they are incapable of finding the correct way to advance or are they taking control of the stage by throwing projectiles all the time.

No, because it's the best strategy in the game from what we know of right now. The game itself promotes camping. If you're ahead and camp, the opponent will be forced to approach, leaving openings to abuse.

If the latter is true then they are actually being offensive but the one who isn't camping isn't punishing them on the openings after spamming a projectile or isn't advancing at all in which case he/she deserves to be spammed.

Smart campers won't leave huge gaping holes when camping. And you don't need projectiles to camp. Marth can camp really well.

Smart campers and projectile spammers will ease up when you approach them and wait for you to leave and opening and screw you over.

If the first is true then I think it's just a phase and it will pass once players start figuring out how to break the defence. Ofcourse when you have projectiles at your disposal and your opponent doesn't advance you keep doing that same thing till your opponent forces you to do other wise. Thats true for any fighting game. Like the fireball in streetfighter. So when I first played brawl and played pit I tested if I could just do f-b all the time and get away with it. But thats not the case since the move has been balanced and after a while I was being punished on it. So is snake really that broken or are we just adapting to his new style? The same question goes for pit and toonlink R.O.B and any other top tier candidate that is said to be broken.

The technical skill level of Smash-players right now is already high because Melee taught us how to be technical. We already have the competitive mindset and knowledge to allow us to work out new effective strategies. We're not like we were 7 years ago.

And when we analyze how the game works, we can say:
Unless we find some ground-breaking new techniques that literally break the game, camping will still be awesome.

When talking about theory fighter, we assume both fighters are highly skilled. And who highly skilled fighters playing to win will undoubtedly camp.

This is getting too long and there's too many questions unanswered. Let's just give this game atleast a year to fully develop it self while not forgetting about melee ( the two can easily co exist at large tourneys.) Anyone who makes up his mind now has obviously not seen enough of this game yet or is just more in favor of melee's gameplay in which case they have every right to but that doesn't justify claims as brawl is a bad game.

Who are you to tell us we haven't seen enough? I've seen plenty. I play the game all the time against tons of people. I've actually been around and helped shaped certain aspects of the meta-game (though my contributions are minor and mostly analystic in nature). And I still think it's boring. In fact, as time went on, I've found even more things to dislike the game for.

It's fun enough to play casually. But on the competitively level? No. I always specify why I think Brawl is an inferior game and will not work on a competitive level. I bring arguments based on logic and analysis, statistics, scientifically testable examples ("Do X as Y-character!"), anecdotal evidence, comparisons to other games (like Melee), points about the history of fighting games, how fighting games work, etc. and much, much else.

All you ever say is:
* I haven't done/seen this myself when I play with my friends
* I haven't seen many people in videos doing it
* Give it time

Giving it time will not magically revolutionize it if it cannot be revolutionized. Just like how the Tekken community is now older and wiser and won't consist of mostly n00bs whenever a new Tekken-game is released, the Smash-community is, too, older and wiser. We know how to play fighting games competitively. We know how to work out new strategies and techniques, we know what to look for, we know how to analyze game mechanics.

And we say: Meh.

In response to Yuna who claims that this game has been deemed bad as a competitive game and who tries to justify by saying everyone who was good at melee is saying it is a bad game I ask how long were professors convinced that the earth was flat. There was no argument and you were a complete lunatic if you were to fight that claim cause come on we've been living on it for so long it must be true. Yet they were proven wrong and if I were to claim that the world is flat now I'd be called a lunatic. Don't jump to conclusions....

"Someone was once proven wrong, hence, I might be right and you might be wrong." - Great argument.

A bazillion things have been discovered and analyzed for us to determine that the game, as of this point, sucks from a competitively viewpoint. Feel free discover a bazillion other things that'll change all that. Until such time, stop saying "The game might become competitively viable in the future!" as if that were a great argument.

Why hold tournaments for a game that we at the moment can't find a good way to play competitively? People are free to try to develop the metagame. But until the metagame becomes playable and not broken, I don't see why we should put down serious money on the line on it.

We can have Brawl as a side-tournament at Melee-tournaments. It can replace Low Tiers (I never cared for Low Tiers). But I and many other competitive Smash players would never pay "full-price" to enter a Brawl-tournament.

Change that by developing Brawl's metagame (if that's even possible). Host your own Brawl tournaments if you'd like. But until such time, don't give us "maybes", "mights", "one day" and "give it time".

Yes, we'll give it time. We'll give it enough time to become a decent game competitively before we play it competitively!

 

[Tyr_03]

I loved reading the initial thread and hated reading most the posts. Points made the poster as well as Chillin and G-reg I thought were for the most part well thought out and made some good points for both sides. Most of the posts here are completely illogical and some even avoid the issue entirely. I have to agree that Melee is by far the better competitive game, especially right now when there is so little to do in Brawl. I find myself playing Brawl for a while at home but quickly changing over to Melee when I realize there is nothing for me to work on in Brawl. I then spend some time practicing my waveshining, shine turn arounds and SHDLs with Fox in Melee. Although Brawl is outrageously fun to play in groups, it simply doesn't measure up to the intensity that Melee has one on one. I only hope that the smash community doesn't completely transfer to Brawl and keeps Melee alive. I plan on continuing to participate in both Brawl and Melee tournaments but I find Melee tourneys far more entertaining both to watch and play in. I hope that I'm wrong. I hope we discover more techniques that can make Brawl more competitively viable. But although it might improve I seriously doubt that it will ever truly measure up to Melee because of the many general flaws described in the original thread and various posters. I respect both sides of the argument and honestly have a lot more respect for the pros who are trying to make Brawl a better game rather than simply disowning it and retiring or remaining exclusively as Melee players.

 

[Meta Ryu]

Yuna-chan -
J"ust because X thousands of casual players like Brawl and will play each other over Wi-Fi and try to beat their friends does not mean they'll be willing to even invest time into becoming actually good with the game (as in finding out the best strategies, studying (as opposed to just watching) videos, spend times on the forums researching things with others). "

Sure just cause alot more people play brawl because of it's awesomeness does not mean it will make it more competitive. I accept that conclusion. However is it not acceptably agreeable to think that with such a higher fan base, that tournament numbers in general will recieve a much larger number then in recent years? These new comers may not be pro, and the numbers may even out/drop down over the next year ot two, but many of these newcomers WILL become pros and with higher numbers comes higher probability.


"And then I'll just go Marth and Fair you to the face from my shield." -Yuna-chan

and please, let's not reduce this thread to "I slash you, no you can't I slash you" ok? =(

 

[Dakoshie Yukazami]

I would have to go with Brawl......Its just better

 

[Yuna]

Sure just cause alot more people play brawl because of it's awesomeness does not mean it will make it more competitive. I accept that conclusion. However is it not acceptably agreeable to think that with such a higher fan base, that tournament numbers in general will recieve a much larger number then in recent years? These new comers may not be pro, and the numbers may even out/drop down over the next year ot two, but many of these newcomers WILL become pros and with higher numbers comes higher probability.

Not necessarily. It takes a certain kind of gamer to spend hours upon hours to practice to become really, really good on a competitive level at the game(s) they play. It's not for everyone.

If Melee attracted 10 million players whereofwhich only 500,000 had the right mindset to become competitive players, then there were 500,000 potential competitive players.

If Brawl attracts 30 million players whereofwhich only 25,000 have the "right mindset", do you see where I'm going? Brawl is really, really good at attracting casual players because it's made to attract casual players.

But competitive gaming isn't for everyone, just like competitive football isn't for everyone or competitive poker. There are tons of casual gamers, football players and poker players. But only a few of them want or even can "go pro".

Lots people flock to football, poker and Brawl. The majority just do it "for fun". Others might try to play them competitively and to "go pro". Many fail or just give up along the way. Only a few make it to the top. Others stay in the lower ranks of comptitive play.

If Brawl, as a game, draws few people who have the motivation, mindset or talent to "go pro", then just because a higher number of people are drawn to the game doesn't mean it'll attract a large number of competitive players.

and please, let's not reduce this thread to "I slash you, no you can't I slash you" ok? =(

He claimed he could do something that was safe. I pointed out how it wasn't very safe. It's not like what I proposed as a punishment to his proposed "safe" approach is even very hard to do, especially in Brawl.

 

[Eternal Neo]

Does it really matter that melee pros don't find brawl competitive? I mean it seems like there are a lot of new players being attracted to (and doing well in) the brawl tournament scene. These people seem to like competitive brawl on its own merits and aren't just doing it because melee isn't as popular. So when the melee pros get tired of brawl and go back to melee, it doesn't seem like it will really matter as long as the new guard takes over.

I can understand the argument that brawl's gameplay is boring and that's what won't keep it competitive, but the campy defensive metagame has already developed and become the standard yet people are still interested in competitive brawl. As long as the tournaments are being held it seems like there will be people striving to be the best, even if doing so means becoming the best at camping and powershielding.

Edit: I want to respond to this quote by Yuna:

"If Brawl, as a game, draws few people who have the motivation, mindset or talent to "go pro", then just because a higher number of people are drawn to the game doesn't mean it'll attract a large number of competitive players."

You seem to be basing your argument on the assumption that less people will want to play brawl competitively because of the nature of the game, but why make that assumption? People want to play brawl because of what it is, an all star fighting game. I believe that the more accessable metagame will in fact encourage more people to attempt to go pro because it takes less effort than melee. The fact that the metagame is defensive and campy might be a turnoff to you, but it's not going to stop new players from trying to be the best.

 

[MoldinMindz]

I think one positive aspect of brawl is the fact that the characters are more varied in their abilities and there are different ways to win. Melee was primarily all about speed, and the slower characters had a tough time doing anything at high level of play, heck even low level of play. In brawl, I find a lot of different types of matches arising. For example a ddd vs. olimar match is nothing like you ever experienced in melee. Those two characters have such unique abilities the matchup is pretty interesting. Also, it feels like there are more than 4 characters who can win consistently, however this might just be because the game is new.


Opinions on this? Does the game feel more balanced due to newness or is it truly a more balanced game where more characters will be winning tourneys?

 

[Eternal Neo]

Opinions on this? Does the game feel more balanced due to newness or is it truly a more balanced game where more characters will be winning tourneys?

This is due to the newness. The characters that have the best camping options will almost certainly be top tier as there will be no way for others to get in on them. As always, however, a person who's mastered timing and spacing will be able to beat someone with less skill even with a weaker character, but people seriously trying to win tournaments will be mastering these skills with the top tier characters.

 

[Yuna]

I think one positive aspect of brawl is the fact that the characters are more varied in their abilities and there are different ways to win. Melee was primarily all about speed, and the slower characters had a tough time doing anything at high level of play, heck even low level of play. In brawl, I find a lot of different types of matches arising. For example a ddd vs. olimar match is nothing like you ever experienced in melee. Those two characters have such unique abilities the matchup is pretty interesting. Also, it feels like there are more than 4 characters who can win consistently, however this might just be because the game is new.

Slow characters could fare quite well in Melee. Luigi, Peach, Ganondorf, Mario and Doctor Mario. Of course, the Top Tiers, most of the Highs and Mids were fast, but there were slower ones as well.

Slow characters in Brawl are still at a disadvantage. Bowser still sucks. Ganondorf is clearly bottom tier. It's not just about speed, it's about what you have all-around.

Pichu was one of the fastest characters in Melee... yet he was Bottom Tier.

You seem to be basing your argument on the assumption that less people will want to play brawl competitively because of the nature of the game, but why make that assumption? People want to play brawl because of what it is, an all star fighting game. I believe that the more accessable metagame will in fact encourage more people to attempt to go pro because it takes less effort than melee. The fact that the metagame is defensive and campy might be a turnoff to you, but it's not going to stop new players from trying to be the best.

The undeep metagame, sluggishness, limited game engine, campy gamestyle and more will turn off many players who play fighting games/Smash competitively.

This leaves us with mostly players who, as you say, aren't really competitive gamers but who are drawn to Brawl because of how accessible it is. But the fact still remains, in order to become really good at a game, you have to spend hours upon hours practicing!

Yes, Brawl is less technically demanding than Melee. But you still have to learn how to play the game! You still have to learn each matchup, their do's and don'ts, how characters work, not only your main(s) and secondary/-ies but also all of the others characters to learn how to play against them.

You need to learn what move leads into what at what percentage as what character(s) against what character(s). You need to learn how to use all stages (I can't tell you how often people get owned by my Brinstar counterpick in Melee simply because they just have no friggin' idea how to play on it). You need to learn priority, range, spacing, what's safe, what's not safe (and against whom) and much, much more.

You need to learn what constitutes "mindgames", how to overcome camping, how to camp yourself, etc.

Unless you have the dedication and determination to learn all that and possibly even talent (because no one can work their way up to Azen-level on sheer willpower alone), you'll get stuck at the mediocre level or maybe even give up. The fact that the competitive Brawl scene will consist of mostly casual gamers does not bode well for its future.

Casual gamers are casual gamers for a reason: Their mindset. They do not want to spend hundreds of hours become really good at a game. They just want to play for fun or at least play so they'll become "good enough". They do not strive to keep improving, just so that they'll, for the most part, be able to beat their friends and neighbours. And there's nothing wrong with that.

This is why a lot of them will stop once they've reached a point either because they can't overcome some hurdles, because they just don't feel like going further or because they just lose interest and have found some new game to play a lot.

Melee was quite popular casually. Millions of people played it casually, yet, out of those millions, a vast majority never even contemplated going competitive. Why is that? No, it's not because they saw some videos of "pros" or saw some of them live and went "Oh noes! That looks hard!". The majority of them have never even seen high level Smash.

No, they just didn't feel like it. Because to them, videogames are all about casual play and fun. They don't want to take the game "too seriously".

A lot of fighting games are widely played casually. Tekken, Soul Calibur, Street Fighter, Guilty Gear. People like to sit down and just play it for fun. But a vast majority of them would never even consider becoming good at them because that requires effort to learn how to block right, combo right, etc.

It will be the same for Brawl. The fact that you no longer need to memorize techniques doesn't change the fact that you still need to memorize frame data, recovery methods, recovery interception, combos, how to interrupt strings/shieldpressure, how to camp, how to combat camping, what moves outprioritize which, move-ranges, spacing and much, much more.

Dance Dance Revolution and In The Groove are two perfectly good examples of casual games. People love it, people play it everywhere. A lot of people become mediocre at it (being able to play some of the hardest songs and clear them). But they don't dedicate themselves to "going pro" despite the game having zero requirements other than being able to read arrows and then to step on sensors accordingly. Because it takes effort (also, it needs you to have quick feet, but it's not really that hard to come up to my level, yet I can consistently beat at least 75% of all people at any given anime convention despite only being mediocre at best) and time.

This is why millions of casual gamers flocking to a game won't necessarily mean tons of new competitive players. The mindsets are just too different.

 

[Prominent]

Yuna is pretty much right on a lot of levels.
I feel Brawl is and was designed to be a game that would attract a higher audience than Melee, and in turn that would mean to construct it in a less competitive manner.

 

[Gamerjoe]

Yuna, I’m not necessarily in disagreement with you but I would also assume that people who want or do play any smash bros game professionally would be having fun doing it. There must be some degree of fun for those who work really hard to be good, the journey to the top is fun as well as the actual competitions themselves, right?

I could be wrong, but I don’t think you meant that Brawl will only attract a casual audience, just not many competitive people. It may have turned off a lot of pros and competitive players from melee, but not every one of them gave up on it, from what it seems.

I wish I wasn’t always bogged down with classes, I would play Smash as much as I could then and I would love to have a shot at the pro community, but I know it would be tough but it would be fun too and I’d follow the competitive scene wherever it went. **** academic probation.

 

[Ryuker]

Can you honestly say you don't see camping dominating the competitive aspects of the game?

Actually no. I see a increase in the waiting game but I don't see camping winning the matches yet. This type of camping also isn't new I saw streetfighter video's from evo where zagat i believe was constantly using 1 move to control the stage. The entire fireball principle builds around it. But the difference in brawl is that breaking the defence doesn't win the match as fast as you would in streetfighter. But you can still break the camping game. If you think this is not the case then please convince.

You're playing the wrong characters (characters with good approach are limited in numbers), the "wrong way" or you're just not that good if you're letting Ike consistently destroy you. He's good but he's not that good. And he gets easily camped to death.

I never said I can't defeat him or he destroys me. I said that he's one of the chars that can punish you more then a melee char did when you miss a attack. Weither he's camped to death is besides the point.

The best characters in the game won't be leaving many openings while the rest will. This is why it's unbalanced when it reaches the upper tiers. Almost no one has a good approach but everyone can camp quite well. So either you'll play a character who can do both and dominate or you'll pretty much be forced into camping his approaching will lead to pain.

How's this anyway different from melee? The top tier has always been rediculously closed in comparison to the low tiers.

And then I'll just go Marth and Fair you to the face from my shield.

Marth can do this in melee as well as long as you don't space well enough. I was just saying this cause there are complaints you can't do shffl type of attacks in brawl and with diddy you can actually do some cool bair air stuff. Also what makes you think I'm gonna bair you when you shield I must be stupid to do that unless it spaced well...

Smash is not like chess... at all. Melee was still about anticipating your opponent. Heck, even when approaching, you could anticipate them and bait them into making a mistake and then punish them severely.

You'd be suprised of the similarities it has with chess and tic tac toe for example. Also I never said melee isn't about anticipating your opponents. I said this is still intact in brawl as well.

In Brawl, even if you manage to anticipate what they're going to do and punish them, the punish won't really hurt that much because of the new game physics. There will be no comboing and most importantly of all: There will be no comboing in KO moves.

Sounds like your not spacing well enough then or aren't comboing efficiently. You don't have to have 4 guaranteed hits but if you do it right mistakes can lead into at least 3 attacks when performed right. 1 Difference though your opponent has more options and possibilities to escape during the combo but you can use this to force them in other situations.

So even if they leave themselves open at 160%, if you can't throw out a KO-move fast enough, all you can do is whack them so they fly off without actually killing them and then it'll be all about the new nerfed-down edgeguarding.

Isn't this just something you have to get used to. Shouldn't we just learn to bait your opponent into a finishing move or be more offensive of stage ( which is still very much possible)

Since when is this ever an issue? Except when you play as Ganondorf against someone who can spam projectiles with stun on Final Destination or some other big flat stage.

So camping doesn't break the game then. I'm saying camping doesn't seem like a rock solid strategy yet but just something players resort to know since they still have trouble approaching. As long as I am not incapable of beating a camping strategy then I don't see whats the issue.

A lot of throws are actually punishable if you try to run up to them with an attack.

You mean I can punish them retreating or my opponent punishes me on my throw?

It's the game's fault that you can't do much even on hit. On block, the game promotes the one who blocked. In a game where there's almost no High-Mid-Low guessing game, where you can block all hits the same way (except against shieldstabbing), you can now Powershield/Perfect Shield really easily. Even if you don't you suffer no hitstun.

What can't you do on hit? I can set them up for juggles. I can jab into f-smash so on. Hitting with banana's with diddy gives me tons of possibilities so on. On block seems simple. You got blocked and will be punished for it unless you spaced well or your opponent playes his cards wrong. So don't attack on block then and just grab. I don't see the issue with this yet. Also you can't block immidiatly after letting go of block so while you can go into other moves you can not spam blocking or let go and still block after it unless your opponent is slow.

No, because it's the best strategy in the game from what we know of right now. The game itself promotes camping. If you're ahead and camp, the opponent will be forced to approach, leaving openings to abuse.

But you still gotta get offensive after camping to abuse your opponents approach. Am I camping when I place two banana's in nice position to take certain route or stay at a distance and throw a banana to set up for something?

Smart campers won't leave huge gaping holes when camping. And you don't need projectiles to camp. Marth can camp really well.

By what standing or jumping with fairs? Sheik could camp really well in melee as well yet i don't hear anyone complain about that. So marths camping when he is playing the waiting game? I don't recall marth spamming projectiles so how would that in anway be broken? I don't think he's as unaproachable as you think maybe your playing the wrong char vs him.

Smart campers and projectile spammers will ease up when you approach them and wait for you to leave and opening and screw you over.

Like sheik in melee... or falco if you don't approach. Of course a camper quits camping and prepares for your attack thats the whole point isn't it. The fact he/she is showcases that a camper can't keep camping all the time but has to change his style and actually fight... . Once again this has been a common strategy in streetfighter and I know a lot of players dislike turtlers but it's not broken.

The technical skill level of Smash-players right now is already high because Melee taught us how to be technical. We already have the competitive mindset and knowledge to allow us to work out new effective strategies. We're not like we were 7 years ago.

Why do you think marth's fair out of shield is so broken then?

And when we analyze how the game works, we can say:
Unless we find some ground-breaking new techniques that literally break the game, camping will still be awesome.[/QUOTE]

Disagree. Maybe it's not a technique we need to adjust to stop camping but more a mindset. maybe we haven't figured out how to use all the moves efficiently or when to use them and when not. Just maybe...

"Someone was once proven wrong, hence, I might be right and you might be wrong." - Great argument.

Not just someone a large number of people. A large number of specialists actually. The arguements you state now have the same kind of feel too it. You can get over your head about things cause you think your so sure and in the end be proven wrong. Have you read azen's post. He seems to like it and says likes it more then melee cause he things its more focussed on mindgames. Then maybe just maybe he has a point huh. Maybe the game is just a different game and requires a different approach. Maybe it's not how you like to fight but maybe it is still a decent fight and maybe it can grow out to be as much as a fight as we see in melee only in a different way.

Why hold tournaments for a game that we at the moment can't find a good way to play competitively? People are free to try to develop the metagame. But until the metagame becomes playable and not broken, I don't see why we should put down serious money on the line on it.

Thats why this game is still in testing phase. Let's just see were it goes. I don't see it as broken yet and judging from the opening post chillin and G-reg seem to think the same.

We can have Brawl as a side-tournament at Melee-tournaments. It can replace Low Tiers (I never cared for Low Tiers). But I and many other competitive Smash players would never pay "full-price" to enter a Brawl-tournament.

hange that by developing Brawl's metagame (if that's even possible). Host your own Brawl tournaments if you'd like. But until such time, don't give us "maybes", "mights", "one day" and "give it time".

I ain't got time to host anything but I'm atleast gonna go to a few to see how it progresses. The last one we had was fun but it was too early to realy be competitive with I hardly knew my character. I still like melee more cause it feels better but at the same time I don't think brawl is bad as a competitive game yet. I don't give you maybes and oneday. I just say don't jump to conclusions. You've been saying it sucks since it was released and every debate I read has always been you trying to force it's weak points on to people. Try debating for something thats not negative for a change..

Yes, we'll give it time. We'll give it enough time to become a decent game competitively before we play it competitively!

What are we arguing for then? I only raise questions and try too look from it from a different point of view and try to find good sides to the changes or stay objective. I do objective research and after playing it doesn't seem broken....
It's exactly what I want. Lets just hold tournaments in this and see how far it can go. I'm not saying brawl is better then melee or that it is THE competitive game. All I'm saying is atleast watch it develop for a year before completely excluding it.

I wasn't intending on going in full blow discussion with you about this I know you point of view. But I don't share it and I don't see why you try to force your opinion on me. A different way would be to say.. good question however I do not think that is the case because.. Instead reading each post feels like your forcing your point of view like it's solid truth. If i say this char can punish you well you start stating it's my lack of skill and immidiatly ramble on about how that char isn't broken. It's not the point I try to make and I juts use a char as a example. I'm not saying all my findings are 100% correct nor am I saying I'm always right. But I don't jump to conclusions stating it is this and it won't change.

Edit:
Ow and you make some good points in your last post. Not everyone wants to be competitive and that is a fact and it's a fact most games these days are created for the casual gamer or the hardcore yet not competitive gamer. I don't like the development since I'm just not a casual gamer but there is some logic to the developers vision. I don't like it however and feel games are suffering because of it decreasing in skill, complexity and depth.

 

[Eternal Neo]

I totally agree with your distinction between casual and competitive players, Yuna and how to be competitive you have to put in a greater amount of time and effort. I also see how brawl is less competitive in a traditional sense than other fighting games. However, I still don't see how the nature of high level brawl is going to prevent a tournament scene from developing. If you or most competitive fighting players don't like how it plays, that's fine, but that doesn't mean everyone agrees with you.

Like I said before the fact that brawl is an all star fighting game is going to attract tons of people to play it. Granted, most will never take the time to become competitive, but the desire to be the best is still going to resonate with some, and eventually someone is going to come along who's put the time in to master all the techniques you mentioned and will start dominating tournaments, and then other players will have to start putting in the time too if they want to win.

I know most competitive players like combo oriented games more. A minority like this style in brawl more, (and I believe the game is big enough that it will attract enough people to have a large, viable tournament scene). And some competitive people like playing competitive DDR more despite it being what you call a casual game. I know one of the top DDR players in the world who takes the time to travel out of state to compete at his casual game. In fact, if this board has taught me anything, it's that more than anything else, competitive players love to win. So if enough players like brawl in general and also want to be the best at it they're going to try to be competitive, even if the style of the game isn't liked by traditional competitive fighting game players.

I do agree with the idea I've heard repeated before that because of brawl's lack of depth, it won't advance past a certain point, that it will be maxed out so to say. Certainly melee never reached this point but I find it hard to believe that games such as Street Fighter that have been out for years and are still played competitively have metagames that are still progressing very much, yet it doesn't stop people for continuing to compete even after they've reached the peak. Granted the tournament scene for SF isn't as big as it used to be, but that's just the nature of gaming. After a point some people are going to move onto other games or real life.

Also, for the record, I like melee's engine much better than brawl's. I just don't think that most of the melee pros not liking the game is going to be as detrimental to the tournament scene as a lot of people here think.

 

[Meta Ryu]

hehe, I got to use an honirific suffix and didn't get flamed for it ^^p

oh and I was just going along the terms of logic of probablity there. I suppose if you take it a level further yea it doens't seem like there would be that many really dedicated players, but to me a game thats more fun then melee in general would attract more people who would be willing to play it at that level. Thats jusy my opinion though.

 

[Cookiez]

and one more thing when i said brawl = more mindgames/less tech skill i didnt mean MORE mindgames than melee i meant MORE mindgames then tech skill in THIS game

Ah, I see, that's indeed a much more logical sentence, I guess I might have misread your post. For that is most definantly true, Melee was much more tech-centric than Brawl is at the moment.

 

[Yuna]

Yuna, I’m not necessarily in disagreement with you but I would also assume that people who want or do play any smash bros game professionally would be having fun doing it. There must be some degree of fun for those who work really hard to be good, the journey to the top is fun as well as the actual competitions themselves, right?

Of course competitive play can and is fun. What I'm saying is that to a casual player, the minute gaming becomes work, it's not fun anymore. The competitive players can have fun despite having to work hard to become better.

It's just that we find Brawl on a competitive plane boring because of the game engine.

I could be wrong, but I don’t think you meant that Brawl will only attract a casual audience, just not many competitive people. It may have turned off a lot of pros and competitive players from melee, but not every one of them gave up on it, from what it seems.

Yes, that's what I meant.

I wish I wasn’t always bogged down with classes, I would play Smash as much as I could then and I would love to have a shot at the pro community, but I know it would be tough but it would be fun too and I’d follow the competitive scene wherever it went. **** academic probation.

I'm not saying Brawl's scene will be tiny and insignificant. I'm saying that just because many more gamers are flocking to Brawl than they did to Melee, because most of them are casual players, the competitive scene won't randomly overshadow Melee's (just because of this).

Actually no. I see a increase in the waiting game but I don't see camping winning the matches yet. This type of camping also isn't new I saw streetfighter video's from evo where zagat i believe was constantly using 1 move to control the stage. The entire fireball principle builds around it. But the difference in brawl is that breaking the defence doesn't win the match as fast as you would in streetfighter. But you can still break the camping game. If you think this is not the case then please convince.

"The Waiting Game" is part of camping, in case you didn't know.

Yes, Zagat was a horrible (as in good) camper in the early Street Fighter games. That's why they were broken. Street Fighter II was all about tick throw. Hit them, then while they're in hitstun, walk forward and throw them. Rinse and repeat (horrible).

I never said I can't defeat him or he destroys me. I said that he's one of the chars that can punish you more then a melee char did when you miss a attack. Weither he's camped to death is besides the point.

I'm Marth, someone's Ike. I'm ahead. I start camping, playing the "waiting game", spamming aerials to space myself and hit you if you come too close. What are you going to do? Unsafe stuff! Try to find openings. Meanwhile, I'll just wait for you to leave an opening and then whack you to death.

How's this anyway different from melee? The top tier has always been rediculously closed in comparison to the low tiers.

Because the Top Tiers are much more removed from the rest now. And in Melee, even Low Tiers could be played in as to not leave many openings (if any). Not anymore!

Marth can do this in melee as well as long as you don't space well enough. I was just saying this cause there are complaints you can't do shffl type of attacks in brawl and with diddy you can actually do some cool bair air stuff. Also what makes you think I'm gonna bair you when you shield I must be stupid to do that unless it spaced well...

Because the shieldgame in Melee is great. Why would I allow you to randomly bair me? I wouldn't leave a window that huge. I'd camp with aerials and pokes and do safe approaches (Marth is king at approaching). Then I'd maybe bait you into trying to approach me.

You talked about Diddy's Bairs as if they were spammable into infinity and unpunishable.

You'd be suprised of the similarities it has with chess and tic tac toe for example. Also I never said melee isn't about anticipating your opponents. I said this is still intact in brawl as well.

You'd be surprised about how many differences there are as well. Brawl has certain things in common with Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow as well. Doesn't mean that we should compare the two.

Sounds like your not spacing well enough then or aren't comboing efficiently. You don't have to have 4 guaranteed hits but if you do it right mistakes can lead into at least 3 attacks when performed right. 1 Difference though your opponent has more options and possibilities to escape during the combo but you can use this to force them in other situations.

Depending on which character you play, there's no way to "space yourself" so that the opponent can't hit you in the face if you try to combo them past a certain point.

Most characters are lucky if they can get a 3-hit combo (guaranteed) in. The game engine promotes escaping combos too much for that (Nairs, Fairs, airdodges, counters, strong Up Bs, DI).

Isn't this just something you have to get used to. Shouldn't we just learn to bait your opponent into a finishing move or be more offensive of stage ( which is still very much possible)

Smart people won't let themselves be baited into finishing moves which are, for the most part, slow. How often do you see smart people walk into Marth's tippered Fsmash (in Brawl)?

So camping doesn't break the game then. I'm saying camping doesn't seem like a rock solid strategy yet but just something players resort to know since they still have trouble approaching. As long as I am not incapable of beating a camping strategy then I don't see whats the issue.

Camping does break the game. It's so good in Brawl, it's the most viable option there is. Even if you don't like it, at some point in a game, you're forced to camp if you want to stand a chance at winning.

Some characters are just destroyed by camping. But camping in general destroys the game.

You mean I can punish them retreating or my opponent punishes me on my throw?

If you throw someone and jump out to hit them, a lot of the time, they can Nair you before you can hit them. Or they could just DI/airdodge out of your follow-up. Throws are in general not comboable in Brawl.

What can't you do on hit? I can set them up for juggles. I can jab into f-smash so on. Hitting with banana's with diddy gives me tons of possibilities so on. On block seems simple. You got blocked and will be punished for it unless you spaced well or your opponent playes his cards wrong. So don't attack on block then and just grab. I don't see the issue with this yet. Also you can't block immidiatly after letting go of block so while you can go into other moves you can not spam blocking or let go and still block after it unless your opponent is slow.

Maybe you haven't heard but this game has almost no hitstun. If they DI attacks and throw out quick aerials, even on hit, certain moves which lag even in the slighest are unsafe because their aerial will come out before you can even shield!

Who said anything about blocking, letting go of blocking and blocking again? Shieldcamping is running around with your shield out a lot. If the opponent is anywhere near you, you shield in preparation for them trying to attack you. If they don't, then you just jump out of shield with an attack (depending on who you are, this is either risky or not at all).

Camping is a big combination of a lot of things, shieldcamping, projectilecamping, movespamming.

But you still gotta get offensive after camping to abuse your opponents approach. Am I camping when I place two banana's in nice position to take certain route or stay at a distance and throw a banana to set up for something?

You camp to bait your opponent into screwing up, then you punish. And then you keep camping (or try to approach and depending on who you are, get owned or manage to approach safely).

By what standing or jumping with fairs? Sheik could camp really well in melee as well yet i don't hear anyone complain about that. So marths camping when he is playing the waiting game? I don't recall marth spamming projectiles so how would that in anway be broken? I don't think he's as unaproachable as you think maybe your playing the wrong char vs him.

In Melee, we had many more options to owned camping. We don't have them anymore. Hence, it's much harder to combat camping. Simple logic.

Like sheik in melee... or falco if you don't approach. Of course a camper quits camping and prepares for your attack thats the whole point isn't it. The fact he/she is showcases that a camper can't keep camping all the time but has to change his style and actually fight... . Once again this has been a common strategy in streetfighter and I know a lot of players dislike turtlers but it's not broken.

Again, we had a lot of options for combating camping in Melee. Many of those are now gone.

Why do you think marth's fair out of shield is so broken then?

Because it is? And what does this have to do with what you just quoted?
This game has almost no shieldstun (or hitstun). Marth's shorthop is quite fast (like, 4 frames). His Nair/Fair are 3 frames and 4-5 frames respectively IIRC. Which means that he can counter moves that have even the slighest of unsafety, even if they're outside of his shieldgrabrange.

Disagree. Maybe it's not a technique we need to adjust to stop camping but more a mindset. maybe we haven't figured out how to use all the moves efficiently or when to use them and when not. Just maybe...

Maybe we already have. Because we know how to play fighting games now. We know how to play Smash. Even if it's different, we still know how to play it properly. We have adjusted. It's just that now that we have, we realize that camping is really, really, really effective.

Try to refute my arguments with something better than "In the future, we might...".

Not just someone a large number of people. A large number of specialists actually. The arguements you state now have the same kind of feel too it. You can get over your head about things cause you think your so sure and in the end be proven wrong. Have you read azen's post. He seems to like it and says likes it more then melee cause he things its more focussed on mindgames. Then maybe just maybe he has a point huh. Maybe the game is just a different game and requires a different approach. Maybe it's not how you like to fight but maybe it is still a decent fight and maybe it can grow out to be as much as a fight as we see in melee only in a different way.

For Azen and the people who like Brawl over Melee, there are at least as many if not more people who think the other way around (especially in Europe). Azen likes the game because he feels the game focuses more on mindgames than Melee, that's his opinion. And how does that invalidate the "Brawl is all about camping"-argument, anyway?

Thats why this game is still in testing phase. Let's just see were it goes. I don't see it as broken yet and judging from the opening post chillin and G-reg seem to think the same.

Let's not forget they (and ManaLord) totally forgot to address the lack of shieldstun, hitstun and even aerials out of shield. Not once did they discuss the fact that even if you space your aerials, people can just aerial you out of shield. Meaning that approach is severely limited to just a few moves each.

I ain't got time to host anything but I'm atleast gonna go to a few to see how it progresses. The last one we had was fun but it was too early to realy be competitive with I hardly knew my character. I still like melee more cause it feels better but at the same time I don't think brawl is bad as a competitive game yet. I don't give you maybes and oneday. I just say don't jump to conclusions. You've been saying it sucks since it was released and every debate I read has always been you trying to force it's weak points on to people. Try debating for something thats not negative for a change..

I think it sucks, I think it's a weak game, I think it's inferior to Melee. So I can't argue that? I should just go away and not say anything at all because it's "negative"? Then the boards will be filled with only threads about how Brawl rules and yes-sayers agreeing with each other.

How is that in any way good?

What are we arguing for then? I only raise questions and try too look from it from a different point of view and try to find good sides to the changes or stay objective. I do objective research and after playing it doesn't seem broken....
It's exactly what I want. Lets just hold tournaments in this and see how far it can go. I'm not saying brawl is better then melee or that it is THE competitive game. All I'm saying is atleast watch it develop for a year before completely excluding it.

We're arguing whether or not it should replace Melee. You might not think so. But others do. It's them I'm addressing most of the time, not you specifically.

I wasn't intending on going in full blow discussion with you about this I know you point of view. But I don't share it and I don't see why you try to force your opinion on me. A different way would be to say.. good question however I do not think that is the case because.. Instead reading each post feels like your forcing your point of view like it's solid truth. If i say this char can punish you well you start stating it's my lack of skill and immidiatly ramble on about how that char isn't broken. It's not the point I try to make and I juts use a char as a example. I'm not saying all my findings are 100% correct nor am I saying I'm always right. But I don't jump to conclusions stating it is this and it won't change.

You say things I disagree with. I point out why I disagree with you and come with scientifically testable examples ("This char can counter that tactic this way"). You can test it yourself. If you determine that I'm wrong, feel free to say so.

Ow and you make some good points in your last post. Not everyone wants to be competitive and that is a fact and it's a fact most games these days are created for the casual gamer or the hardcore yet not competitive gamer. I don't like the development since I'm just not a casual gamer but there is some logic to the developers vision. I don't like it however and feel games are suffering because of it decreasing in skill, complexity and depth.

Good. There's nothing wrong with casual gaming. I'm a casual gamer myself when it comes to several kinds of games and certain games in general. People just don't seem to realize this.

I totally agree with your distinction between casual and competitive players, Yuna and how to be competitive you have to put in a greater amount of time and effort. I also see how brawl is less competitive in a traditional sense than other fighting games. However, I still don't see how the nature of high level brawl is going to prevent a tournament scene from developing. If you or most competitive fighting players don't like how it plays, that's fine, but that doesn't mean everyone agrees with you.

Umm... what?

What I'm saying is that Brawl won't really evolve that much because of how the game is programmed (you can't magically evolve something that's limited) and that the scene won't magically grow huge because the majority of the people who play Brawl (at least at the moment) are Casual gamers who would never even attempt to play it competitively.

It'll attract people to play it casually. It might even attract people to try to play it competitively. But competitive gaming isn't for everyone. Everyone doesn't have the mindset for it. Some don't even have the "talent" for it (certain games require certain "talents", for example, not everyone can become DDR/ITG-champs due to hard work alone, not if they have no sense of rhythm).

So even if there's an influx of new casual gamers, not many of them are going to end up "going Competitive" and even if they do, many of them will droup out.

How many really skilled DDR players are there in the world, really? Not many. Why? Because it's hard! It takes dedication, talent and practice. This is why there aren't thousands of DDR-players even remotely close to the level of the world champions.

They just don't feel like working that hard. Or they drop out once it becomes too hard. It'll be the same for Brawl. Casual gamers who are casual to the core will not magically become competitive because Brawl is more accesible and cutesy. DDR is accessible. How many "pros" are there?

Casual gaming is a philosophy. Competitive gaming another. We can co-exist happily. People can cross over. But while everyone can be a casual gamer, not everyone can be a competitive gamer. Because it has a lot of requirements. It's like how tons of people sing. But not many want or can become professional singers, even if their voices aren't half-bad.

It's not about who's better than who. It's just about how it's just not something suitable for everyone.

 

[Kirby M.D.]

All these Brawl/Melee arguments are funny, such a massive clash of opinions. As for me, I like Brawl more than Melee. I think Brawl is better than Melee. I like playing smart than being technical. And some people like playing technical and flashy. A lot say Melee is 'better' than Brawl because of technical skill; well, that's nice, I honor your opinion. I think Brawl is 'better' than Melee because of how much more thinking is involved.

As for which game is more competitive, depends how you define it. A lot more people now are competing in Brawl than in Melee, so Brawl is more competitive. But defining it by which game is better is harder to do since its just the opinion of what people's favorite quality of smash is.

Just play whatever game you like better and have fun

I hate to be a d-rider, but I love you for this post. Listen to this man, it doesn't matter which game is more competitive or more technical, what matters is which game you enjoy more. Have fun, Melee doesn't have to die for Brawl to thrive; both games can co-exist.

EDIT: Goddammit Yuna, you need to listen to this the most. Really now, calm f*cking down for once, the mean old Brawl won't hurt you anymore.

If you have that large of a problem with Brawl's competitive aspects, shouldn't you be trying to keep Melee hype? Seriously, are you an internet masochist or something? If Brawl is that bad, why bother with it or the boards? Play Melee, nobody's stopping anyone from keeping Melee alive. If anything, coming to the Brawl boards and complaining casts a negative shadow on the high-class Melee players, which is very bad. Actions speak louder than words, show us with a resurgent Melee scene that it is more competitive. Don't let Melee become nothing more than a strawman.

 

[Eternal Neo]

long post

You aren't addressing my argument. I'm not saying that most of the new players are going to go pro or even attempt to, but I am saying that with such a large base of people playing the game, there are going to be some that want to do it competitively. You state that because of the defensive, campy style of play, that the gameplay won't evolve past a certain point. Ok fine, I agree with you, but I'm not sure how exactly that's going to stop a competitive scene from forming, considering most games that are played competitively reach a peak and stop evolving at some point or another. After a point, you can't really discover any new techniques in games like Halo or DDR, you can only improve your personal technical skills at them. Yet that lack of evolution in the gameplay doesn't stop people from holding tournaments and trying to be the best. I don't see why brawl would be any different. Even if there are no new techniques to discover in the game, people can still improve by practicing timing, spacing and mindgames, and because of the competitive mindset so many gamers have, I don't see why people will stop trying to win tournaments.

The crux of your argument seems to be that because you and most of the pro melee players have deemed brawl uncompetitive because of its lack of depth, that other competitive gamers will feel the same way and therefore a tournament scene won't develop. Considering that games with nowhere near the depth of melee are played competitively all the time though, I really don't think that point holds much water. I'm just trying to say that it doesn't really matter if all of the melee pros hate brawl and decide to never go to a brawl tournament again. There are going to be plenty of people who want to step in and attempt to be the best at the game and that alone will make brawl competitive, not the amount of depth the game engine has.

 

[Meta Ryu]

bowser used to suck. he does NOT suck anymore. Play a good bowser and watch as they thow you off the stage. OVER AND OVER.


"Slow characters in Brawl are still at a disadvantage. Bowser still sucks. Ganondorf is clearly bottom tier. It's not just about speed, it's about what you have all-around" -yuna

 

[Ryuker]

"The Waiting Game" is part of camping, in case you didn't know.

Yes, Zagat was a horrible (as in good) camper in the early Street Fighter games. That's why they were broken. Street Fighter II was all about tick throw. Hit them, then while they're in hitstun, walk forward and throw them. Rinse and repeat (horrible).

But it had a competitive community didn't it. It's still being done at evo till today. The only point your making here is that you dislike that style of play but thats not what were arguing about. Were arguing weither camping really breakes the game and with the example you just provided I get the idea that camping can get much worse then what we see in brawl.

I'm Marth, someone's Ike. I'm ahead. I start camping, playing the "waiting game", spamming aerials to space myself and hit you if you come too close. What are you going to do? Unsafe stuff! Try to find openings. Meanwhile, I'll just wait for you to leave an opening and then whack you to death.

This is what smash has been about all the time. How can you use a character that does not have a projectile as a example for camping breaking the game. As I experienced it marth is good but not broken. It's not like you can't defeat his defence. Ike has his f-b to advance and he needs less openings to take a stock.

Because the Top Tiers are much more removed from the rest now. And in Melee, even Low Tiers could be played in as to not leave many openings (if any). Not anymore!

As long as atleast 3 chars are thrilling to watch fighting there will be a interest for it. Even if we are only left with playing snake for example if those matches still favor the better player we still have a good match going on and it's still exciting to see players out smart each other. Witrh brawl it seems there's at least 5 chars that seem to be equal to each other so why shuld we forget about the game cause a few chars just aren't usable in tournaments ( which your claiming, I think it's way too soon to conclude that and I see a lot of diversity if I look for video's).

Because the shieldgame in Melee is great. Why would I allow you to randomly bair me? I wouldn't leave a window that huge. I'd camp with aerials and pokes and do safe approaches (Marth is king at approaching). Then I'd maybe bait you into trying to approach me.

You talked about Diddy's Bairs as if they were spammable into infinity and unpunishable.

I think your blowing it up. I mentioned diddy's bair attack cause using it can feel like shffling in melee. You can link bairs into other attacks and even dair. It's pointless say what will definetly happen in this situation ( the beauty of this game is that it isn't absolute) I'm not going to randomly bair you if you start poking and playing the waiting game I''m going to resort to a banana for example. Your saying you'd maybe bait me? I'm going to be baiting you with banana's and such. You have no projectile as marth and thus you must come( unless you want to wait there. I'm gonna blocking the direct way with a banana so you have to jump to approach and I can use that to my advantage. When start grabbing and throwing the banana's I catch them and throw them back. When you fall i try to exploit it.
Thats just a few of the solutions I can come up with for the problem and none of them seem te result in marth just jumping fairing all day. I'm saying I will win but there is definetly a fight going on.

You'd be surprised about how many differences there are as well. Brawl has certain things in common with Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow as well. Doesn't mean that we should compare the two.

Chess is a competitive multiplayer turnbased 1 vs 1 game. Smash isn't turnbased but when you take a turn you can't immidiatly do something else and thus you have to play smart and stay out of trouble. If I use a strong attack I pay with lag. Lag that you can punish me on. If you block too soon I grab. I know its hard to imagine chess with players taking turns whenever they want( the game is too restricted for that too work) but in this game it works fine. Course I'm not saying there the same but I was just using it to illistrate what the bases of smash is.

As for castlevania that's not a multiplayer game as far as I know. Might have similarities ( duh smash is a platform 2d fighter) but besides that the comparisons stops since your opponent is a cpu controlled opponent and even though you have to fight them they are made to be defeated by the player while if it were multiplayer they would be made for the purposes of winning.

Depending on which character you play, there's no way to "space yourself" so that the opponent can't hit you in the face if you try to combo them past a certain point.

So the combo stops their. Instead you have to land on the ground and block their incoming attack and then continue. You just gotta play more carefull. You are trying to attack while you can't attack at that time ( cause you'r being hit as far as you say here). So in reality all that left to do for you is block or avoid the attack and exploit the lag.

Most characters are lucky if they can get a 3-hit combo (guaranteed) in. The game engine promotes escaping combos too much for that (Nairs, Fairs, airdodges, counters, strong Up Bs, DI).

Can't really say much about that. It depends on what you prefer seeing. Comboes or just smarth play. You clearly don't like it that you can't continue the combo but that's just a matter of preference. Your describing this as broken and that's wrong since their are ways to use the situation to your advantage.

Smart people won't let themselves be baited into finishing moves which are, for the most part, slow. How often do you see smart people walk into Marth's tippered Fsmash (in Brawl)?

Yeah right. I'm pretty sure amsah can bait you into his f-smash with marth if he wants too in melee. In brawl you can just as well bait people into attacks that aren't as obvious as you want. Your not a dumb player when you get hit by a f-smash at the right time your a dumb player when you run into smash spam but that's not what I'm saying you should do here. If someone runs into a f-smash of marth then the questions is if they were:
- expecting it ( dum don't run into something that will hit you)
- weren't expecting it ( either baited and predicted or mislead)
- Spaced them self badly and thought they were safe.

Camping does break the game. It's so good in Brawl, it's the most viable option there is. Even if you don't like it, at some point in a game, you're forced to camp if you want to stand a chance at winning.

This is what is concerning you the most I think and you might be wrong or right about this but that's exactly what time will tell us. I see mixed results. I see lots of camping but I also still see a fight going on. It's smart camping and that's not bad. It only gets bad when one can just spam all day and doesn't have to worry about counterattacks but thats not the case with brawl as of yet. Bad camping looks horribly boring. Good camping can actually look exciting.

Some characters are just destroyed by camping. But camping in general destroys the game.

State your opinion instead of stating it as a fact. I want to know if this is really true cause it's like the wobble debate all over again. I don't think it's breaking the game and I see lot of of players agree on that as well. Is it really breaking the game or just part of the game?

If you throw someone and jump out to hit them, a lot of the time, they can Nair you before you can hit them. Or they could just DI/airdodge out of your follow-up. Throws are in general not comboable in Brawl.

But they do setup. Throws can atleast lead to another attack and on low percentage you can atleast use them to stay close to your opponent in which case you block or avoid when they try to attack first or grab when they block so on. It might not lead to a awesome combo but you can still use to pressure.

Maybe you haven't heard but this game has almost no hitstun. If they DI attacks and throw out quick aerials, even on hit, certain moves which lag even in the slighest are unsafe because their aerial will come out before you can even shield!

Interesting so attacking in certain situations can actually be a bad choice then cause your opening yourself up to them then. We did this in melee as well jump into 1 arial so we can counter after getting hit and exploit that situation. Which char are your referring to know? Cause if there arials are so fast to hit you before you can shield can't I hit them again after their arial and turn the tables?

Who said anything about blocking, letting go of blocking and blocking again? Shieldcamping is running around with your shield out a lot. If the opponent is anywhere near you, you shield in preparation for them trying to attack you. If they don't, then you just jump out of shield with an attack (depending on who you are, this is either risky or not at all).

Camping is a big combination of a lot of things, shieldcamping, projectilecamping, movespamming.

So it's not something easy. Sound like it actually takes skill to camp well and if thats the cae what are we arguing about?

You camp to bait your opponent into screwing up, then you punish. And then you keep camping (or try to approach and depending on who you are, get owned or manage to approach safely).

So it's just another tactic. You dislike it. You also state it has down sides and can be punished so I don't understand why it's so absolutely horrible.

In Melee, we had many more options to owned camping. We don't have them anymore. Hence, it's much harder to combat camping. Simple logic.

Ow did we. The only reason I've heard is powershielding and only a small percentage could use that efficiently. As a marth I was still **** anoyed that I had to attack sheik first cause she could needle spam me. But that didn't break the game. I still remember faab quit ganon cause he hated falco's laser spam. I still remember anyone in general hated camping with falco or sheik or peach. But it still happened. In brawl since shielding takes shorter to let go and hold up we can actually approach with a shield ( we needed wavedashing for that in melee). Catching items is even easier know we can actually catch them while doing a arial. All sound like options to counter spamming.

Again, we had a lot of options for combating camping in Melee. Many of those are now gone.

Which and what's gone? I remember m2k vs mango man he was spamming like crazy vs him and finally usmashing. Camping was effective in melee as well. Really really effective.

Because it is? And what does this have to do with what you just quoted?
This game has almost no shieldstun (or hitstun). Marth's shorthop is quite fast (like, 4 frames). His Nair/Fair are 3 frames and 4-5 frames respectively IIRC. Which means that he can counter moves that have even the slighest of unsafety, even if they're outside of his shieldgrabrange.

So you saying its a wall that can't be penetrated? I seriously doubt that.

Maybe we already have. Because we know how to play fighting games now. We know how to play Smash. Even if it's different, we still know how to play it properly. We have adjusted. It's just that now that we have, we realize that camping is really, really, really effective.

Try to refute my arguments with something better than "In the future, we might...".

So we grew up. Camping has been very effective for a long time but it doesn't mean it's broken. It's been a hard strategy to fight for years but each time someone did it he/she was booed and called lame so on. Sounds like were just maturing and really do all that is necessary.

For Azen and the people who like Brawl over Melee, there are at least as many if not more people who think the other way around (especially in Europe). Azen likes the game because he feels the game focuses more on mindgames than Melee, that's his opinion. And how does that invalidate the "Brawl is all about camping"-argument, anyway?

It doesn't but it does show that atleast 1 of the top players thinks the game is deep.

Let's not forget they (and ManaLord) totally forgot to address the lack of shieldstun, hitstun and even aerials out of shield. Not once did they discuss the fact that even if you space your aerials, people can just aerial you out of shield. Meaning that approach is severely limited to just a few moves each.

Possibly but why attack a shield in the first place. Just don't attack the shield. Couldn't the reason why they didn't discuss it mean they think it's not such a big deal?

I think it sucks, I think it's a weak game, I think it's inferior to Melee. So I can't argue that? I should just go away and not say anything at all because it's "negative"? Then the boards will be filled with only threads about how Brawl rules and yes-sayers agreeing with each other.

How is that in any way good?

I'm not saying it should be. I'm sorry I shouldn't tell you how to debate. It's just that each debate I get into with you is made of huge posts. Adresses 3 points at the same time and is filles with statements that haven't been proven to be true yet. And we can't debate about your opinion can't we. If you dislike it sure but if your stating something as proven it has to **** well be proven. Plz link me too some tourney video's ( that aren't wifi) that show this game is all about camping and that marth is broken and can't be beaten.

We're arguing whether or not it should replace Melee. You might not think so. But others do. It's them I'm addressing most of the time, not you specifically.

K well don't reply to me about that then. We see eye to eye on this one and I just want too scenes to be present not 1 game replacing the other. That being said I don't think brawl should be seen as the main show of the tournament but should be in a testing phase in which we hold tournaments besided melee. Then after 1 year or so we can debate again if it should be the main show.

You say things I disagree with. I point out why I disagree with you and come with scientifically testable examples ("This char can counter that tactic this way"). You can test it yourself. If you determine that I'm wrong, feel free to say so.

Sure I will when I get the chance. I'm too busy with school to go to tournaments lately but I'll try to play marth and see if he is soo broken as you say he is. As long as the debate goes like this we actually get result but stating camping breaks the game isn't a scientific proven fact.

Good. There's nothing wrong with casual gaming. I'm a casual gamer myself when it comes to several kinds of games and certain games in general. People just don't seem to realize this.

Same here I like to play the new mkwii slightly competitive but not like I play smash. For me it's just fun online as long as the items aren't that frequent . What annoys me though is that companies aim for the casual audience more and more now and not the the hardcore competitive crowd. Even if these can easily coexist. So what we get is arguements about they should take this out so even if these can easily be done both. Luckilly looking at brawl sakurai seems to ( eventhough he doe'sn't really care that much about tournaments) still value a good fight. So he atleast tried to make everything versatile and took more care then a lot of developers would do. He likes to make his games deeper then they look on the surface and the fact that we find so much stuff that he hasn't mentioned even though not as major as wavedashing shows that he still cares about the gameplay.

What I'm saying is that Brawl won't really evolve that much because of how the game is programmed (you can't magically evolve something that's limited) and that the scene won't magically grow huge because the majority of the people who play Brawl (at least at the moment) are Casual gamers who would never even attempt to play it competitively.

You can evolve tactics however. If I take these boards, the websites that have sprung up and the huge influx of new members then a lot of people were really anxious to get competitive in brawl. It's only been out for a month or so there's not saying there won't be tournaments in the summers. And reading these debates the opinions are scattered and the numbers who do want to compete is large aswell.

It'll attract people to play it casually. It might even attract people to try to play it competitively. But competitive gaming isn't for everyone. Everyone doesn't have the mindset for it. Some don't even have the "talent" for it (certain games require certain "talents", for example, not everyone can become DDR/ITG-champs due to hard work alone, not if they have no sense of rhythm).

So even if there's an influx of new casual gamers, not many of them are going to end up "going Competitive" and even if they do, many of them will droup out.


How many really skilled DDR players are there in the world, really? Not many. Why? Because it's hard! It takes dedication, talent and practice. This is why there aren't thousands of DDR-players even remotely close to the level of the world champions.

They just don't feel like working that hard. Or they drop out once it becomes too hard. It'll be the same for Brawl. Casual gamers who are casual to the core will not magically become competitive because Brawl is more accesible and cutesy. DDR is accessible. How many "pros" are there?

Casual gaming is a philosophy. Competitive gaming another. We can co-exist happily. People can cross over. But while everyone can be a casual gamer, not everyone can be a competitive gamer. Because it has a lot of requirements. It's like how tons of people sing. But not many want or can become professional singers, even if their voices aren't half-bad.

It's not about who's better than who. It's just about how it's just not something suitable for everyone.

I agree but there's not telling yet if these new players won't eventually branch of in a new community. Not all of them are casual. Melee got big cause a few individuals had the guts and the dedication to host tournaments at home even though they had no sponsors and such. That attitude got this community a long way and I say that that is weither brawl is going to be a competitive succes depends upon.