Brawl vs. Melee Research Project

[Metal Reeper]

^ perfectly put.

 

[kirbykid]

Come to think of it, I don't recall seeing much of anything in regards to the relative balance of the characters in terms of matchups, just their moves. I didn't really feel like I got an answer as to which is more balanced in that regard.

That being said, I just found this very nice post on SRK regarding balance.
http://shoryuken.com/f2/truth-about-capcom-balancing-games-246896/index2.html#post9334207

TL;DR: If you have a character that is balanced in terms of having a solid overall game play (think Master of None) becoming the top tier, you likely have a good game because no particular aspect has a dominating presence. Ideally, in SSB's case, this should be Mario.

MK is top tier in Brawl because of the floaty gameplay and he has very fast and untradable attacks. Not only that, but combining his multiple recovery options with the lower hitstun make mistakes for him less of a deal.

I think trying to tackle which game has a better character balance would need its own series. Also, I think that topic is too big for just me alone. Also, Brawl could use a bit more time developing before you compare its tier lists to Melee. We're still figuring out how Brawl is played.

That SRK post was pretty good. I really like it. Looking at balance in terms of the relative power of specialty characters vs the all-around character is really intriguing. Of course, we have to combine this approach with others to get the best results. It's easy to make a top tier character. Just make their jab do 100 damage. So regardless of how the character is design, an unbalanced element like that can throw things off.

I'm not sure if Mario would be the all-around character. It seems like a good choice, but the more uniquely each character is designed, the more it seems like there isn't an all around character. With so many Shoto's in SF it makes sense that Ryu is the all-around fighter. SF is designed around a specific kind of projectile zoning and dragon punches.

I will say that MK is top tier because he has too many pros and not enough cons. Also, MK has the most straight forward kind of power and tons of nuance. So, people can easily understand why MK is good and can get to work making him more effective. A character like Pit on the other hand is going to need more time to develop.

Good thinking.

I can't not be angry about Brawl. It is a very blatant statement by Nintendo that they don't want the series to be associated with the fighting genre. The fact that you can still play it competitively means nothing. It is a game with very few and very short combos. It is a game where they very deliberately, meticulously rearranged knockback distances, angles, falling speeds, movement speeds, and attack cooldown times to prevent followups, thus ensuring the items would be the most effective offense.

If they had some sort of creative vision where they wanted a fighting game, but with different physics so the old players wouldn't alienate newcomers, that easily could have been done. You could take Brawl as it is, and add a series of cancels and movement techs for people to discover that allow for deeper offense. It would be a totally different game than Melee, but equally deep. That's not what they did.

Brawl's legacy will be to 'otherise' fans of the gameplay in 64 and Melee from the Nintendo sphere. Unless it was just the weather that year, and HAL develops a very different attitude for the next game, we have nothing to look forward to. Melee/64 players should wake up and embrace the hacks because that's all we're gonna have. That's the future of Smash, pretty much.

You do know that playing offensively and defensively are just different playstyles, right? You have to make work which ever one you choose. Otherwise, I'm not sure what you mean here.

Skill based follow ups are still in Brawl and so are combos. Combo's aren't everything. Just because Street Fighter started the fighting genre off and started combos doesn't mean every fighter has to have them. Still, combos are the least deep and, in my opinion, least interesting part of Smash. The real depth in either game comes from the cause and effect counters. Doing one thing that changes the scenario so that you can do something else, which changes the scenario... and so on. This is why the process of edge guarding works. This is how you can "corner" players even though there aren't invisible walls like in Street Fighter. This is how you can create a matrix or a "check mate" strategy.


You seem really upset, so I don't want to make things worse. But I do want to try and figure out where you're coming from/your point of view. Have you watched my videos? They explain that Brawl has lots of complexities, depth, and takes a lot of skill. Do you not think these qualities are the most important? If not, then what?

But really Brawl is more like a Nintendo game with its changes. I love Mario Strikers Charged, Zelda: 4 swords battle, Zelda Spirit Tracks battle, Pikmin 2 battle, and Mario Kart because Nintendo has a very unique way of designing multiplayer modes.
Like Super Mario Bros. you can have really engaging, skillful, and deep gameplay without adding cancels or doing things the way anyone else does them.

 

[BEES]

I tried to shorten this because I know long posts are scary.

Combos are the main thing that make the game fun, for many people. They reward creative players--they're really a form of artwork. The hitstun is a canvas, and in Smash Bros no two combos are completely alike. Since multiple followup paths are possible, they allow two people to play different games while playing the same game. In that way they improve the diversity of how matches play out.

We have no shortage of respect for the mindgames and the approach strategies Brawl players use. (Partly because all of that is in Melee, minus a couple things, and plus a few other things). We know those take considerable skill, but they're... kinda dull on their own.

Where's the canvas in Brawl? I can't watch any two players that use the same character and tell them apart by their style. I could do it by skill, but two evenly matched players... they look THE SAME.

Also... combos do take skill. You have to cover 2-4 DI options or 4 teching options with each hit. That's tough as nails. Don't diss if you want to be taken seriously.

 

[ICHIGOBLEACH]

I think i've given up on your videos now
obvious brawl bias

 

[Frame Perfect]

Skill based follow ups are still in Brawl and so are combos. Combo's aren't everything. Just because Street Fighter started the fighting genre off and started combos doesn't mean every fighter has to have them. Still, combos are the least deep and, in my opinion, least interesting part of Smash.

The real depth in either game comes from the cause and effect counters. Doing one thing that changes the scenario so that you can do something else, which changes the scenario... and so on. This is why the process of edge guarding works. This is how you can "corner" players even though there aren't invisible walls like in Street Fighter. This is how you can create a matrix or a "check mate" strategy.

lmao this is how a combo works kirbykid, you place a hit accordingly to follow up with another.... you in essence bend the 'scenario' in order to increase damage or KO. and edgeguarding takes alot less 'skill' than comboing.... it is an inevitable outcome involving any platform with a ledge.

i saw two little kids come over to my house and play smash with each other because they had it at home.... six and nine years old. interesting because they constantly were 'checkmating' each other by hitting each other repeatedly off the stage, and then upon recovery they both seemingly had edgeguarding down. i assumed they were geniuses and went on about my day, but in retrospect, not one combo came to mind(during their smash session).

this of course is because comboing takes a great understanding of your character in itself, not including everything you did to get that first hit.... but then you have to follow up with equally accurate placements(timing/spacing). now throw lcancelling in the mix to follow, which by itself creates a massive skill gap.... and then compare that with brawl and it's like.... what do brawlers really have to worry about? spacing? timing? i would love to play melee at its current metagame and pace without worrying about pressing another button.... i constantly find myself messing up on little things and depending on who you're playing.... that's a stock.

lmfao and also why would you bring brawl edgeguarding up in a 'skill' based argument? how often do people practice hitting an auto-sweetspot?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hix2qQfyBVI#t=1m59s


in all honesty kk, these videos are pretty pointless and rather boring as well. i think you should just stick to the surveys and change them up so they are more statistically accurate and post the results on here. but if history serves correct then it really doesn't matter either way. like i said before.... people like shitty music.

also i have one final question:

how many variants of melee have we created?

 

[King Funk]

now throw lcancelling in the mix to follow, which by itself creates a massive skill gap.... and then compare that with brawl and it's like.... what do brawlers really have to worry about? spacing? timing? i would love to play melee at its current metagame and pace without worrying about pressing another button.... i constantly find myself messing up on little things and depending on who you're playing.... that's a stock.

lmfao and also why would you bring brawl edgeguarding up in a 'skill' based argument? how often do people practice hitting an auto-sweetspot?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hix2qQfyBVI#t=1m59s


in all honesty kk, these videos are pretty pointless and rather boring as well. i think you should just stick to the surveys and change them up so they are more statistically accurate and post the results on here. but if history serves correct then it really doesn't matter either way. like i said before.... people like shitty music.

also i have one final question:

how many variants of melee have we created?

There are so many wrong things in what you just said.

I recently was at a very large Brawl tournament in France (because I happened to be in Paris) with like 150+ entrants, including all of the european top players and Ally. I honestly wasn't very good at Brawl but I still got to play with some of the top players, and almost all you said clashes with my perception of their skills.

First of all, l-canceling doesn't create a "massive skill gap", it's not even that hard to l-cancel. Nobody who seriously plans to play in tournaments and improve will have much trouble learning how to press a button before you land with an air attack on the ground. The difficult part about l-canceling is not the move itself, it's learning what new possibilities and followups you can do AFTER you do it. And it's exactly the same thing with wavedashing.

"What do brawlers have to worry about? Spacing? Timing?" I swear I laughed at that one. I'm gonna give a pretty good example about something. You know Brawl+? You know why it never succeeded in being a good game? Because it never appealed to Melee players (who hated it for being un-technical and silly) and Brawl players, who found it "too easy". That's right. Too easy. Why? Because auto-l-canceling was added to the gameplay. Now some people interpret it as "n00bs being able to combo as pros". But that wasn't the biggest danger of that feature. The danger was how anyone could simply throw out air moves ANY TIME because they all had very low lag and were too hard to punish. And that is something Brawl players hated. Why? In Brawl there is a specific type of skill: a good player knows exactly the lag of his air moves and will use them in the smartest way as possible. In the end, l-canceling in Melee, except giving new possibilities for combos and followups, doesn't do much difference about how you're supposed to play smash, it just halves the lag of those moves. Good players in Brawl and Melee will still think the same way about how you throw air moves. There are some players I played, especially Mr. R (a Marth from the Netherlands), who plays extremely smart and still, very offensive play. While he uses his air moves as safely as possible he's not afraid to rush down.

If you think there's no edgeguarding skills in Brawl, you're both right and wrong. But I think we need another term in Brawl edgeguarding. Since auto-sweetspot makes recovering a lot easier, the "edgeguarding" part KirbyKid may be referring to actually comes right after that: it's about the ability to predict someone's ledge options. Whether he's gonna roll out of the edge, getup normally, getup attack, jump. It's true that Melee has that too. But the fact that there's the simple edgeguarding before that actually reduces a lot of focus on the job of predicting ledge options. There are some top players I played in France at Brawl who were just amazing at that.

Also, just doing a survey and posting the results makes no sense at all. If you think about it, haven't we been doing a "survey" ever since Brawl's release? Hasn't everyone here already ****ted on Brawl as hard as they can? The point of those videos is more about defining how we judge games.

And about the variants of Melee, I have a better question. Did Melee start with a big youtube and forum community, with lots of proficient hackers, players with advanced photoshop and animation skills, and all sorts of specialists? By the way, I can clearly see a possibly good hacked version of Melee: keep the gameplay intact, but buff all mid and low tiers. I'm surprised no one ever thought of that. Maybe a reason for that is that Project M is coming soon and so far it's looking great.

I can agree that "Brawl can be boring". But "Brawl takes no skill"... Seriously? Lol...

Hasn't anyone seen Brood vs M2K or DEHF vs Brood?

inb4gettingmeleescrubflamed

 

[kirbykid]

I tried to shorten this because I know long posts are scary.

Combos are the main thing that make the game fun, for ME. They reward creative players--they're really a form of artwork. The hitstun is a canvas, and in Smash Bros no two combos are completely alike. Since multiple followup paths are possible, they allow two people to play different games while playing the same game. In that way they improve the diversity of how matches play out.

We have no shortage of respect for the mindgames and the approach strategies Brawl players use. (Partly because all of that is in Melee, minus a couple things, and plus a few other things). We know those take considerable skill, but they're... kinda dull on their own in my opinion.

Where's the canvas in Brawl? I can't watch any two players that use the same character and tell them apart by their style. I could do it by skill, but two evenly matched players... they look THE SAME to me.

Also... combos do take skill. You have to cover 2-4 DI options or 4 teching options with each hit. That's tough as nails. Don't diss if you want to be taken seriously.

I edited a bit of your statement (in bold) just to be clear about what we're talking about. So if Brawl doesn't excite you, that's fine. If you don't want to put any more time into seeing if the game is neat in a different way, that's cool too. But that kind of ends our conversation.

I never said combos don't take skill. I said they aren't everything. I didn't diss combos either. There are combos like that in Brawl all over the place. G&W and Snake have a complex tech chase style grab combo potential. I combo looped arrows into combos often enough in tournament. There are many examples, but I don't think they matter to you.

I think i've given up on your videos now
obvious brawl bias

Cool. But like I said, the first point is to look at language. If you don't care about that part of my project or care to be a part of the conversation in any constructive way, then we'll just go our separate ways.

lmao this is how a combo works kirbykid, you place a hit accordingly to follow up with another.... you in essence bend the 'scenario' in order to increase damage or KO. and edgeguarding takes alot less 'skill' than comboing.... it is an inevitable outcome involving any platform with a ledge.

Oh, really? Well, do me a favor and break down edgeguarding and comboing according to the DKART skill system. That's a much better way of explaining the skill of one versus the other instead of a story about kids that don't play at a high tournament level (cause that's what we've been looking at this whole time).

lmfao and also why would you bring brawl edgeguarding up in a 'skill' based argument? how often do people practice hitting an auto-sweetspot?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hix2qQfyBVI#t=1m59s

I lumped edgeguarding and going off the stage to attack the opponent (offguarding?) together. I'm not entirely sure if we have a word for that. Basically, if you can't simply attack the stage to hit a recovering opponent, you either have to hit them after the grab the ledge or well before they get there.

in all honesty kk, these videos are pretty pointless and rather boring as well. i think you should just stick to the surveys and change them up so they are more statistically accurate and post the results on here. but if history serves correct then it really doesn't matter either way. like i said before.... people like shitty music.

Thanks for your opinion.

 

[Big-Cat]

I think trying to tackle which game has a better character balance would need its own series. Also, I think that topic is too big for just me alone. Also, Brawl could use a bit more time developing before you compare its tier lists to Melee. We're still figuring out how Brawl is played.

With the way you were going, it seemed like you were going to talk about THAT kind of balance.

I still don't feel like Brawl is going to last for very long. Either we finally put a ban (or at least temp-ban) on Meta-Knight or the game will finally degenerate into defensive tactics.

That SRK post was pretty good. I really like it. Looking at balance in terms of the relative power of specialty characters vs the all-around character is really intriguing. Of course, we have to combine this approach with others to get the best results. It's easy to make a top tier character. Just make their jab do 100 damage. So regardless of how the character is design, an unbalanced element like that can throw things off.

What other approaches are you talking about?

I'm not sure if Mario would be the all-around character. It seems like a good choice, but the more uniquely each character is designed, the more it seems like there isn't an all around character. With so many Shoto's in SF it makes sense that Ryu is the all-around fighter. SF is designed around a specific kind of projectile zoning and dragon punches.

Just looking at Mario's stats in several of his games should tell you he's to be the balanced stats one. Even Sakurai says he's the balanced one.

As for Ryu, I think he's been considered the balanced one since the beginning since he and Ken were the only shotos back in '91 when SFII came out, and even then, Ken became the Luigi over time.

And just what is SSB designed around then?

I will say that MK is top tier because he has too many pros and not enough cons. Also, MK has the most straight forward kind of power and tons of nuance. So, people can easily understand why MK is good and can get to work making him more effective. A character like Pit on the other hand is going to need more time to develop.

You can say that for any top tier character. Being a straightforward character helps a lot, but obviously, not all characters are like this such as Rachel Alucard in BlazBlue and Litchi Faye-Ling in its sequel.

Still, there's no denying that Meta Knight is top tier simply because the engine favors his play style so much.

As it is, IMO, the game's engine should've been designed around Mario, not an aerial emphasis.

 

[kirbykid]

With the way you were going, it seemed like you were going to talk about THAT kind of balance.

*nods* I also wanted to keep the idea of "balance" ambiguous until episode 4 to show that it applies to so many more things than relative character strength.

I still don't feel like Brawl is going to last for very long. Either we finally put a ban (or at least temp-ban) on Meta-Knight or the game will finally degenerate into defensive tactics.

What other approaches are you talking about?

What's wrong with defensive tactics? Designing unique characters in a fighting game almost always means there's going to be some tough matchups. This basically means one character has to play very carefully/defensively to compete in that matchup.

I look at Dhalsims play and it seems like he's designed to stay back, hit you from afar, and really make you work for a win. Looking at Daigos Ryu fight various Sims over the years, I see a lot of Daigo being forced to play reactively/defensively. I see nothing wrong with this as long as there's variety and/or depth (interplay).

I think MK is really overpowered in many ways, but I recently played some good ones at a tourney with my "rusty" Pit and the matchup wasn't that bad at all. I used to bad MK from some of my tournaments, but now I just go with it.

Unlike SF, stages in smash are a big part of the game. Considering character strength + stage selection is another factor. Also, we tend to look at tiers in a linear list despite the web of matchups and other factors that contribute to that list. If all characters are in either an A tier or a B tier, that would be great. I don't think it would matter too much if the trickster characters were slightly ahead of the all around fighter. And because we know you can balance to a platstyle, a skill set, or a character there should be many ways to look at the issue of character balance.

Just looking at Mario's stats in several of his games should tell you he's to be the balanced stats one. Even Sakurai says he's the balanced one.

As for Ryu, I think he's been considered the balanced one since the beginning since he and Ken were the only shotos back in '91 when SFII came out, and even then, Ken became the Luigi over time.

This is the whole quote "An easy-to-use character, Mario sets the standard for balance."
It says about the same in Japanese "スタンダードで、使いやすい!" The biggest difference is how you interpret "で." I think "sets the standard" may be a bit of a loose translation.

Just like in Mario Kart, Mario is supposed to be the all around character. This doesn't mean he's balanced near the top in terms of character strength. This means that playing him won't be too hard and you'll get some decent results. Basically, he's middle of the road material. In Mario Kart DS, speed is king and the light weight, high acceleration character+karts rule. This means Mario gets overshadowed.

And just what is SSB designed around then?

Since all the characters come from different games (for the most part) each are modeled after their original games and to fill out a unique part of Smash's design space. Sakurai tried to keep some of the classic characters playstyles and moves the same. But excluding Smash64 (where the characters are more similar), there isn't a standard beyond the mechanical/character balancing formulas I talked about in the video.

You can say that for any top tier character. Being a straightforward character helps a lot, but obviously, not all characters are like this such as Rachel Alucard in BlazBlue and Litchi Faye-Ling in its sequel.

Still, there's no denying that Meta Knight is top tier simply because the engine favors his play style so much.

I'm saying being straight forward really helps boost a character at the beginning of a game's life/metagame development. Tell me if you think the SF4 Sagat comparison is apt. He was really strong and used a lot at first, and now (especially with SSF4) I see less of him in tournaments.

The tier strength of a character as a game evolves is a very complicated thing. So yes, there are many ways to describe why MK is so good.

As it is, IMO, the game's engine should've been designed around Mario, not an aerial emphasis.

Around Brawl Mario? You don't think he's too weak? You do realize that Mario is a character that has an air focus since Super Mario Bros. on the NES right? This is what I mean when I say that Brawl is more of a Nintendo style game. Taking to the air = platforming. The genre that Mario owns.

 

[Frame Perfect]

let me explain why you're ********....

There are so many wrong things in what you just said.

I recently was at a very large Brawl tournament in France (because I happened to be in Paris) with like 150+ entrants, including all of the european top players and Ally. I honestly wasn't very good at Brawl but I still got to play with some of the top players, and almost all you said clashes with my perception of their skills.

I'm glad that you went to one tournament, saw ally in the distance, and received a complete understanding of both games.

First of all, l-canceling doesn't create a "massive skill gap", it's not even that hard to l-cancel. Nobody who seriously plans to play in tournaments and improve will have much trouble learning how to press a button before you land with an air attack on the ground. The difficult part about l-canceling is not the move itself, it's learning what new possibilities and followups you can do AFTER you do it. And it's exactly the same thing with wavedashing.

allow me to demonstrate how massive next time you decide to cross countries to not make it out of pools. ill play with l-cancelling and you play without it.... 50 dollars sound good? 2/3. also l-cancelling is not a move, i don't know what the hell you're talking about.... lmfao have you even played melee before? also everything you do in any game is a setup for something proceeding it... people don't press buttons without reason. and the difficult part about lcancelling is pressing it. lmfao what do you know about this game, it takes a good amount of practice to be doing it consistently and pros still miss it very obviously at times.

"What do brawlers have to worry about? Spacing? Timing?" I swear I laughed at that one. I'm gonna give a pretty good example about something. You know Brawl+? You know why it never succeeded in being a good game? Because it never appealed to Melee players (who hated it for being un-technical and silly) and Brawl players, who found it "too easy". That's right. Too easy. Why? Because auto-l-canceling was added to the gameplay. Now some people interpret it as "n00bs being able to combo as pros". But that wasn't the biggest danger of that feature. The danger was how anyone could simply throw out air moves ANY TIME because they all had very low lag and were too hard to punish. And that is something Brawl players hated. Why? In Brawl there is a specific type of skill: a good player knows exactly the lag of his air moves and will use them in the smartest way as possible. In the end, l-canceling in Melee, except giving new possibilities for combos and followups, doesn't do much difference about how you're supposed to play smash, it just halves the lag of those moves. Good players in Brawl and Melee will still think the same way about how you throw air moves. There are some players I played, especially Mr. R (a Marth from the Netherlands), who plays extremely smart and still, very offensive play. While he uses his air moves as safely as possible he's not afraid to rush down.

do you understand the concept of smash? grab a notepad, ill be brief.

1. smash operates on stocks, the first person to lose all their stocks.... loses.
2. you take a stock by knocking your opponent off stage by increasing damage.
3. the most efficient way to increase damage is comboing..../wobbling.

lmfao and also quit talking about timing in brawl like it takes superior skill than in melee. brawl is melee's ******** cousin with tripping. melee is more advanced in every way, plus brawl doesn't even have light shielding. ask kirbykid what light shield edgeguarding is.... the controller you use is designed to light shield.... i would go in depth, but it's likely you've already lost me and let's face it.... you're probably a little kid and use your wiimote

If you think there's no edgeguarding skills in Brawl, you're both right and wrong. But I think we need another term in Brawl edgeguarding. Since auto-sweetspot makes recovering a lot easier, the "edgeguarding" part KirbyKid may be referring to actually comes right after that: it's about the ability to predict someone's ledge options. Whether he's gonna roll out of the edge, getup normally, getup attack, jump. It's true that Melee has that too. But the fact that there's the simple edgeguarding before that actually reduces a lot of focus on the job of predicting ledge options. There are some top players I played in France at Brawl who were just amazing at that.

LMFAO do you know what edgeguarding is? when your opponent recovers on stage, you have failed to edge guard them.... this is really a waste of my time.

Also, just doing a survey and posting the results makes no sense at all. If you think about it, haven't we been doing a "survey" ever since Brawl's release? Hasn't everyone here already ****ted on Brawl as hard as they can? The point of those videos is more about defining how we judge games.

i usually enjoy thinking for myself.... maybe you short try it once. you might even be able to respect yourself one day. can you not judge a game for yourself? are you that incompetent...

And about the variants of Melee, I have a better question. Did Melee start with a big youtube and forum community, with lots of proficient hackers, players with advanced photoshop and animation skills, and all sorts of specialists? By the way, I can clearly see a possibly good hacked version of Melee: keep the gameplay intact, but buff all mid and low tiers. I'm surprised no one ever thought of that. Maybe a reason for that is that Project M is coming soon and so far it's looking great.

I can agree that "Brawl can be boring". But "Brawl takes no skill"... Seriously? Lol...

Hasn't anyone seen Brood vs M2K or DEHF vs Brood?

inb4gettingmeleescrubflamed

1. answer the first: no one was proficient at brawl hacking when it came out.
lmfao why'd you throw photoshop in the mix? LOL brawl the fourth/maybe fifth is coming out and now's your time to shine? go nuts, hopefully you'll be better at project m then you were at life.



and for those of you who don't know, me and kirbykid are well acquainted.... the 'anger' that he refers to in meleee players is of course Rage......... oooooh weeeee..... plus kirbykid does really neat stuff with melee kirby....
check it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhWdJJx6wlc

say hi to marcus for me, richard. you going to quakecon......... hopefully ill see ya!

 

[BEES]

I edited a bit of your statement (in bold) just to be clear about what we're talking about. So if Brawl doesn't excite you, that's fine. If you don't want to put any more time into seeing if the game is neat in a different way, that's cool too. But that kind of ends our conversation.

I never said combos don't take skill. I said they aren't everything. I didn't diss combos either. There are combos like that in Brawl all over the place. G&W and Snake have a complex tech chase style grab combo potential. I combo looped arrows into combos often enough in tournament. There are many examples, but I don't think they matter to you.

For the record, I'm pretty late on the Smash Bros bandwagon. I STARTED with Brawl. It was my introduction to Smash Bros. It was watching the videos of Isai playing 64, and the PC/Ken set from MLG New York that motivated me to get good, and eventually make the switch from Brawl to Brawl+, and then this past year to Melee.

You're right that the discussion ends. We clearly want different things out of the games. But don't get the impression that I didn't give Brawl a fair chance before reaching my opinion. I played it for nearly a year.

 

[King Funk]

Your arguments are all pure ad hominem it's so hilarious.

allow me to demonstrate how massive next time you decide to cross countries to not make it out of pools. ill play with l-cancelling and you play without it.... 50 dollars sound good? 2/3. also l-cancelling is not a move, i don't know what the hell you're talking about.... lmfao have you even played melee before? also everything you do in any game is a setup for something proceeding it... people don't press buttons without reason. and the difficult part about lcancelling is pressing it. lmfao what do you know about this game, it takes a good amount of practice to be doing it consistently and pros still miss it very obviously at times.

Uh... did I say it WASN'T USEFUL? I only said it halves the lag and makes combos + followups easier. And sorry if I said by accident it was a move, I meant technique.

I still do errors l-canceling in Melee, although I do it 99% of the time right in 64 (which is my best game). But it's indeed a lot easier in 64. I still don't believe it's that hard to do it, I just need to put more practice into it.

do you understand the concept of smash? grab a notepad, ill be brief.

1. smash operates on stocks, the first person to lose all their stocks.... loses.
2. you take a stock by knocking your opponent off stage by increasing damage.
3. the most efficient way to increase damage is comboing..../wobbling.

lmfao and also quit talking about timing in brawl like it takes superior skill than in melee. brawl is melee's ******** cousin with tripping. melee is more advanced in every way, plus brawl doesn't even have light shielding. ask kirbykid what light shield edgeguarding is.... the controller you use is designed to light shield.... i would go in depth, but it's likely you've already lost me and let's face it.... you're probably a little kid and use your wiimote

I'm confused... I never knew you could write good fiction. If you aren't you are going to refer where I said timing was more important in Brawl than in Melee.

I know quite a lot about Melee, but you automatically state I don't know **** just because of a few disagreements.

LMFAO do you know what edgeguarding is? when your opponent recovers on stage, you have failed to edge guard them.... this is really a waste of my time.

There is almost no edgeguarding in Brawl, that's why I said we needed another term for what follows the opponent's recovery? Covering his edge options?

i usually enjoy thinking for myself.... maybe you short try it once. you might even be able to respect yourself one day. can you not judge a game for yourself? are you that incompetent...

Apparently, your only means of communicating is insulting people. =D

1. answer the first: no one was proficient at brawl hacking when it came out.
lmfao why'd you throw photoshop in the mix? LOL brawl the fourth/maybe fifth is coming out and now's your time to shine? go nuts, hopefully you'll be better at project m then you were at life.

Brawl+ sucked, Balanced Brawl is a joke, Brawl- is nothing serious but fun, Project M is the only one that looks good.

And indeed, I agree, Melee was loved by everyone to a point it didn't feel like needing hacking. Does that make you happy?

You gotta work on your debating skills because 70% of it was just blind mockery.

Really fun to insult people when it's on the internet and they're not in your face. ^^

I'm not gonna lower myself to your level by assuming what type of person you are irl.

Have fun.

 

[BEES]

First of all, l-canceling doesn't create a "massive skill gap", it's not even that hard to l-cancel. Nobody who seriously plans to play in tournaments and improve will have much trouble learning how to press a button before you land with an air attack on the ground. The difficult part about l-canceling is not the move itself, it's learning what new possibilities and followups you can do AFTER you do it. And it's exactly the same thing with wavedashing.

I had an excruciatingly difficult time learning L-canceling, and I still occasionally miss them. Not all of us are gifted with robot fingers.

"What do brawlers have to worry about? Spacing? Timing?" I swear I laughed at that one. I'm gonna give a pretty good example about something. You know Brawl+? You know why it never succeeded in being a good game? Because it never appealed to Melee players (who hated it for being un-technical and silly) and Brawl players, who found it

That is the reason some Melee players hated Brawl+, but those were the people that hated the game for all the wrong reasons.

I liked Brawl+, but I felt it didn't go far enough. It wasn't STRATEGICALLY deep enough. From a technical-skill standpoint, I didn't care. Were it up to me, the game would have been sped up further, with wavedashing included, friction increased, and a series of move-specific cancels added to increase the depth. As it was, it wasn't particularly deep.

ALC was a poor choice compared to a series of move-specific, situational cancels. I wanted to do things oldschool fighter style, because I wasn't a fan of a universal button-press cancel that overpowered aerials.

 

[Brightside6382]

Done

 

[Big-Cat]

What's wrong with defensive tactics? Designing unique characters in a fighting game almost always means there's going to be some tough matchups. This basically means one character has to play very carefully/defensively to compete in that matchup.

I look at Dhalsims play and it seems like he's designed to stay back, hit you from afar, and really make you work for a win. Looking at Daigos Ryu fight various Sims over the years, I see a lot of Daigo being forced to play reactively/defensively. I see nothing wrong with this as long as there's variety and/or depth (interplay).

There's nothing wrong with defensive play in of itself. The problem with it being so dominating is that not only are matches much more boring to watch and play, but those that need to get in to attack (ie Cammy, Sonic) have a hard time getting in.

If everyone has to play defensive with each other (regardless of matchup with the exception of MK), then it's going to be a very boring game.

Just like in Mario Kart, Mario is supposed to be the all around character. This doesn't mean he's balanced near the top in terms of character strength. This means that playing him won't be too hard and you'll get some decent results. Basically, he's middle of the road material. In Mario Kart DS, speed is king and the light weight, high acceleration character+karts rule. This means Mario gets overshadowed.

One of the main reasons that you'll get decent results in the beginning with a Mario character is that they have a little bit of everything, but it's not OP (even if top tier). Even if some characters with extremeties are present, the Mario character can exploit the weaknesses of that character where as the specialist can try to out specialize the Mario character.

Since all the characters come from different games (for the most part) each are modeled after their original games and to fill out a unique part of Smash's design space. Sakurai tried to keep some of the classic characters playstyles and moves the same. But excluding Smash64 (where the characters are more similar), there isn't a standard beyond the mechanical/character balancing formulas I talked about in the video.

I don't think being from different games makes a difference.

I'm saying being straight forward really helps boost a character at the beginning of a game's life/metagame development. Tell me if you think the SF4 Sagat comparison is apt. He was really strong and used a lot at first, and now (especially with SSF4) I see less of him in tournaments.

I know, but I'm just saying that you'll also have characters that are on top but really tough to learn. I won't deny that a straight forward character is more likely to develop a more advanced character than one which is hard to learn.

You also don't see Sagat much because he was nerfed (his drop in use is likely due to tier whoring).

Around Brawl Mario? You don't think he's too weak? You do realize that Mario is a character that has an air focus since Super Mario Bros. on the NES right? This is what I mean when I say that Brawl is more of a Nintendo style game. Taking to the air = platforming. The genre that Mario owns.

I think most of the cast from Melee just sucks. I couldn't touch Samus because she was so floaty and then there was that really stupid nerf on Peach's second jump.

I wouldn't say that Mario has always had an air focus. Otherwise, we would've had Touhou like games or something from the last level of Kid Icarus. In order to beat the Mario games, you have to do a little bit of running ON THE GROUND and jumping in the air. I can't think of a time where you're in the air for such a large extent of time (not counting powerups).

 

[kirbykid]

allow me to demonstrate how massive next time you decide to cross countries to not make it out of pools. ill play with l-cancelling and you play without it.... 50 dollars sound good? 2/3. also l-cancelling is not a move, i don't know what the hell you're talking about.... lmfao have you even played melee before? also everything you do in any game is a setup for something proceeding it... people don't press buttons without reason. and the difficult part about lcancelling is pressing it. lmfao what do you know about this game, it takes a good amount of practice to be doing it consistently and pros still miss it very obviously at times.

First I want to say, let's all dial back the sarcasm and abrasive communication (me included). Let's do our best to ask questions and talk back and forth so that we reach some kind of understanding.

I think both of you are trying to express different ideas and are getting all tangled up. So I suggest slowing things down, cleaning it up, or just dropping it from this point.

Not that I actually expected you two to follow through with this challenge, but I am kind of interested in taking you up on a 0$ money match. I don't even play Melee, but I'm thinking about brushing off my Kirby for neat opportunities like this. No L-caceling eh? Sounds like a worthy challenge. We can even record it. LOL.

do you understand the concept of smash? grab a notepad, ill be brief.

1. smash operates on stocks, the first person to lose all their stocks.... loses.
2. you take a stock by knocking your opponent off stage by increasing damage.
3. the most efficient way to increase damage is comboing..../wobbling.

Not to exactly fuel this "conversation" but I will say that your statement depends on a specific definition of efficient.

The MOST effecient way to kill your opponent is to kill them at 0% damage in one move. If you think I'm joking I'm not. I've done this so many times in tournament. And even at low %s others have done a great job taking stock off of a very quick/small set up.

For the most part, building damage is quite reliable.

lmfao and also quit talking about timing in brawl like it takes superior skill than in melee. brawl is melee's ******** cousin with tripping. melee is more advanced in every way, plus brawl doesn't even have light shielding. ask kirbykid what light shield edgeguarding is.... the controller you use is designed to light shield.... i would go in depth, but it's likely you've already lost me and let's face it.... you're probably a little kid and use your wiimote

Light shielding is cool. I don't really miss it.

i usually enjoy thinking for myself.... maybe you short try it once. you might even be able to respect yourself one day. can you not judge a game for yourself? are you that incompetent...

This kind of talk isn't necessary.

and for those of you who don't know, me and kirbykid are well acquainted.... the 'anger' that he refers to in meleee players is of course Rage......... oooooh weeeee..... plus kirbykid does really neat stuff with melee kirby....
check it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhWdJJx6wlc

say hi to marcus for me, richard. you going to quakecon......... hopefully ill see ya!

I'm not pointing any fingers at anyone.

I'll be at quakecon. I'll see you there for our money match!

 

[Frame Perfect]

let's brush up on our diction....

Common misconceptions about ad hominem(wikipedia)

Gratuitous verbal abuse or "name-calling" itself is not an argumentum ad hominem or a logical fallacy.[5][6][7][8][9] The fallacy only occurs if personal attacks are employed instead of an argument to devalue an argument by attacking the speaker, not personal insults in the middle of an otherwise sound argument or insults that stand alone. "X's argument is invalid because X's analogy is false, there are differences between a republic and a democracy. But then again, X is idiotically ignorant." is gratuitously abusive but is not a fallacy because X's argument is actually addressed directly in the opening statement. "X is idiotically ignorant" is not a fallacy of itself. It is an argument that X doesn't know the difference between a republic and a democracy.

do you understand the concept of smash? grab a notepad, ill be brief.

1. smash operates on stocks, the first person to lose all their stocks.... loses.
2. you take a stock by knocking your opponent off stage by increasing damage.
3. the most efficient way to increase damage is comboing..../wobbling.

lmfao and also quit talking about timing in brawl like it takes superior skill than in melee. brawl is melee's ******** cousin with tripping. melee is more advanced in every way, plus brawl doesn't even have light shielding. ask kirbykid what light shield edgeguarding is.... the controller you use is designed to light shield.... i would go in depth, but it's likely you've already lost me and let's face it.... you're probably a little kid and use your wiimote

let's play fact or fiction....

1. Brawl has tripping
2. Brawl doesn't have light shielding
3. Lightshielding can be used in Melee as an 'edgeguard'.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWJj6AzHCHY#t=01m42s


refresh my memory.... what is our mm richard? do you play melee? also did you say 0 dollars? and i don't care if you lcancel really. char. of choice 2/3

and no kk, you don't need a vid to tell you how to evaluate a game.... that is why i made fun of him so 'blindly'.


also i associate efficient and practical..............

 

[King Funk]

Oh wow... You're definitely the holder of advanced knowledge by knowing you can lightshield edgeguard some characters in Melee. Wow. I'm so impressed. Good for you. =D

You seem to have misconceptions about Brawl players, the people who defend Brawl like me:
- aren't always people who don't play Melee.
- are almost never people who would think Brawl > Melee.
- may enjoy some aspects of Brawl for legitimate reasons.
- don't believe in flaming other people for liking another game.

Spoiler

- can possibly JV6 you at smash 64 with ease. jk

I should stop feeding alt account trolls.

 

[ICHIGOBLEACH]

Oh wow... You're definitely the holder of advanced knowledge by knowing you can lightshield edgeguard some characters in Melee. Wow. I'm so impressed. Good for you. =D

You seem to have misconceptions about Brawl players, the people who defend Brawl like me:
- aren't always people who don't play Melee.
- are almost never people who would think Brawl > Melee.
- may enjoy some aspects of Brawl for legitimate reasons.
- don't believe in flaming other people for liking another game.

Spoiler

- can possibly JV6 you at smash 64 with ease. jk

I should stop feeding alt account trolls.

you only say this because you play brawl lol

 

[King Funk]

you only say this because you play brawl lol

In terms of how much I play the games:
64 > Brawl > Melee (that's soon to change)
In terms of how much I like the games:
64 = Melee > Brawl

 

[A Pimp Named Slickback]

these videos are biased beyond belief

I'm sorry kirbykid I gave your videos a chance but you are obviously adding your own opinions into these videos. Why you asked melee players to fill out your surveys is beyond me because it doesn't sound like you are actually representing any of the opinions in them.

I would love to see an actual balanced and objective comparison of the games but you are obviously incapable of this.

 

[kirbykid]

refresh my memory.... what is our mm richard? do you play melee? also did you say 0 dollars? and i don't care if you lcancel really. char. of choice 2/3

and no kk, you don't need a vid to tell you how to evaluate a game.... that is why i made fun of him so 'blindly'..

I don't play Melee actively, but I'm considering trying to brush off my Kirby. That's right! 0 dollars because I don't money match people by rule. My idea was really just a way of trying to get a melee match or two in at quakecon.

Maybe I should just focus on the tournament I'm entering.

these videos are biased beyond belief

I'm sorry kirbykid I gave your videos a chance but you are obviously adding your own opinions into these videos. Why you asked melee players to fill out your surveys is beyond me because it doesn't sound like you are actually representing any of the opinions in them.

I would love to see an actual balanced and objective comparison of the games but you are obviously incapable of this.

It's funny how people are saying the videos are bias, but no one is saying that the methods or the points are false. Bias or not, use it as a jumping off point.

Most of the quotes are from "melee" people (I use that term loosely). And I picked quotes and topics from things that were repeated among many contributers.

So if you think the videos support Brawl too much, that's because Melee supporters have so many misconceptions/bold statements about Brawl. Some were true. Some needed tweaking. And many were just mean spirited.

Next time you want to claim that I've added too much of my own opinion, try quoting me so I can address the issue directly.

 

[ICHIGOBLEACH]

I don't play Melee actively, but I'm considering trying to brush off my Kirby. That's right! 0 dollars because I don't money match people by rule. My idea was really just a way of trying to get a melee match or two in at quakecon.

Maybe I should just focus on the tournament I'm entering.






It's funny how people are saying the videos are bias, but no one is saying that the methods or the points are false. Bias or not, use it as a jumping off point.

Most of the quotes are from "melee" people (I use that term loosely). And I picked quotes and topics from things that were repeated among many contributers.

So if you think the videos support Brawl too much, that's because Melee supporters have so many misconceptions/bold statements about Brawl. Some were true. Some needed tweaking. And many were just mean spirited.

Next time you want to claim that I've added too much of my own opinion, try quoting me so I can address the issue directly.

it's just little things like when you say brawl is as hard as melee
blatantly wrong
like when you said brawl has button mashing moves, so it's as technical as melee
or when you said that only fox/falco/falcon take tech skill
or when you "disprove" the "myths"

 

[ranmaru]

But yeah. On the survey when asked which was harder, I wished there was a choice that said "both can be hard in their own way" or something. But I explained that in the write-out. : D

But of course, brawl has options, as does melee. There is Glide-tossing, which is a spacing move, not as good as wavedashing, but still something. I'm actually going to try a brawl tournament for the first time, so I'll see how it goes.

 

[kirbykid]

it's just little things like when you say brawl is as hard as melee
blatantly wrong
like when you said brawl has button mashing moves, so it's as technical as melee
or when you said that only fox/falco/falcon take tech skill
or when you "disprove" the "myths"

Not to be insulting, but careful listening/reading skills are important here.

I didn't say that Brawl is as hard as Melee.
I didn't say it's as technical as Melee. I said there are many ways of looking at being technical and there are many factors to consider as well.
I didn't say only Fox/Falco/Falcon take tech skill. I said they're at the top/they're the extreme examples. This doesn't mean that they're the only examples of high tech skill either.

So, watch the videos again or pay closer attention. I'm constructing very careful and very detailed logical statements. You can't just partially listen or skim the text to get what I'm saying.

 

[ICHIGOBLEACH]

eh i don't really feel like watching your videos because they annoy me (especially the bias).
it seems a lot of the recent posters in this thread agree
actually here i just read some of the script
"MYTH 4.2 In Brawl defensive options usually have the advantage"
how is this a myth? brawl is a lot slower and focuses on highly defensive play, shields don't wear out as fast because you can't pressure them nearly as well in brawl, perfect shielding is extremely easy, shield grabbing due to lack of shield stun, etc
heres another one
MYTH 4.3 L-canceling in Melee encourages more diverse playstyles by making aerials highly viable.
"*Show APM thread data* We know that special attacks and ground attacks aren’t used very much by many top level players in Melee. As long as you can use aerial attacks, pressure drop, land, and cancel half of the lag you can get a lot of utility out of air attacks. However, aerial moves are so good that most of high level players attacks are aerials. Unfortunately, this gives players a much smaller pallet to work with to create their own playstyles. With less special and ground moves used, the combat is also less diverse. This myth is busted"
many ground moves are used, not as much as aerials but still
when you say they don't use specials you're wrong. what do you think spacies follow up their aerials with? oh yeah a special. People have very different playstyles. ex shiz is extremely offensive and technical. mango's extremely techincal, efficient, and smart. Jman is technical smart and one of the campier foxes, abusing another extremely important special move for both spacies, the blaster.

 

[Black Mantis]

Done

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ubuBlAR6z2g

 

[ICHIGOBLEACH]

^^^from what is arguably the greatest brawl set of all time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZWiDKTlIV8

 

[Deleted member]

Removed by Moderator

 

[Kuraudo]

-_-

This is gonna degenerate into unnecessary flaming, and eventually Melee players gloating and ****ting on Brawl again.

Quote me on it. If this keeps going, that's going to happen.

[EDIT]

Apologies for not contributing much of anything with that statement, KirbyKid. This is just tiring. I really like what you're trying to do.

 

[King Funk]

^^^from what is arguably the greatest brawl set of all time
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZWiDKTlIV8

So the match automatically sucks because it has a time out? You probably just saw the 8 minute count of the video and didn't watch anything of it. If you saw the stream, or better, if you were at the event itself, the 8 minutes would just FLY. I remember the hype being so intense on the stream that when the 5 second countdown appeared, I was like "what? already?". xD

All I can say is that, since you won't watch that round anyway, you can at least see it like this: a random japanese Olimar forces M2K to TIME HIM OUT on Rainbow Cruise, where the matchup becomes like 70-30. That's how nervous M2K was.

Or Kaos vs Mr. R round 1 at Bushido Brawl Impact: also a time out, but still a great game.

I'm starting to wonder if some of you guys on this thread just care about the videos and your daily load of entertainment.

 

[Dart!]

i can't believe this topic exists in the MELEE DISCUSSION THREAD, i thought we...as the better players knew how futile it was to argue with brawl kids

this sounds flame/trollish but i'm serious. melee players should know better than this.

 

[King Funk]

i can't believe this topic exists in the MELEE DISCUSSION THREAD, i thought we...as the better players knew how futile it was to argue with brawl kids

this sounds flame/trollish but i'm serious. melee players should know better than this.

I hope you're not calling me a Brawl kid.

And what people have given me here on those forums are not arguments, just insults. I'm the one who's wondering what I'm doing here.

It's sad that an amazing community like the Melee one is invaded by complete ******* on smashboards and youtube. I'll stick to the tourney people, at least they have souls.

And KirbyKid, I really like your project, keep working on it. I'll post some feedback whenever I can, instead of trying to argue with the members of the hatewagon.

 

[ICHIGOBLEACH]

to be fair king funk you come in and really support brawl and then turn around and say, "are you calling me a brawl kid?"

 

[BEES]

KF has admitted multiple times he prefers Melee and 64, merely that he 'likes' Brawl.

You haven't seen any of the zealous Brawl supporters here, except for possibly KirbyKid himself.

 

[King Funk]

to be fair king funk you come in and really support brawl and then turn around and say, "are you calling me a brawl kid?"

Yeah because all Brawl players are kids, right?

Pathetic.

Everyone knows Melee > Brawl, but it makes more Melee of a better game than Brawl of a bad game. It's been about two years and a half since we had this debate going. I bet all you Brawl haters went like "ohhhhh awesome a Melee vs Brawl thread so I can talk **** as hard as I can, cuz that's so fun". Then you see the guy's videos and are utterly dissapointed because he's actually reasonable. You go like "omg he's being all complicated and stuff and I think he says Brawl = or > Melee". All you people accuse KirbyKid of being biased, and he's already answered to those statements but you still keep on because you feel butthurt and somehow surprised by the fact that YOUR OWN SURVEY ANSWERS led to that. If there weren't so many people spurting out all sorts of ignorant stuff like "Brawl has tripping therefore sucks", "Brawl has no skill", etc. none of this would have happened.

What did you expect coming here? Something similar to Powerthirst Melee Edition 2?

I could go on for years about this. I swear I could even write a 100 page thesis about the stupidity of forum/youtube meatriders.

KF has admitted multiple times he prefers Melee and 64, merely that he 'likes' Brawl.

You haven't seen any of the zealous Brawl supporters here, except for possibly KirbyKid himself.

The zealous Brawl supporters don't need to spit in your soup to tell you their game is good. I haven't seen many of them. It's mostly due to the fact that the game isn't as good as Melee, but at least they aren't completely immature about it.

 

[Dart!]

 

[King Funk]

Too mad. =D

Oh well trolly kids. I'm going to Cali next summer so if you want to some REAL TALK, meet me there. Oh and Melee MM's if you want. I'll see if you guys are as good in Melee as you are at ****riding and flaming. ^^

 

[CloneHat]

I don't even play Melee

Oh! I get it now.

 

[A Pimp Named Slickback]

to be totally fair he did play melee

I also don't like that Kirbykid has the entire thread's title as "brawl vs. melee."

I think that this whole thread has been made to troll the melee community. And whether or not the purpose of it was to troll, I think that we should let this thread die because really, what good is coming of it?

Let's allow this thread to die and let KK go on with his videos.

I'm pretty sure we're the only ones watching them anyways.