Community Growth Discussion

[Vegard]

yeah fully agreed with Lovage, we need some transparency for the back room. Like Wikileaks only with less controversial material lol

 

[Redact]

I personally do not see what is wrong at the moment with having the MBR publicly viewable, and a separate side by side forum of MBR public response/feedback (for anyone to post in) about the current discussion/posts, with say one thread for each thread in the MBR.

Then again, I haven't seen the full content of the back room, thus I do not know if this is the best solution (im pretty sure if cactuar has a plan it would probably be a lot more thought out than my own)

 

[Bones0]

If I'm not mistaken, they have the old MBR archives publically viewable somewhere. At least I remember reading a bunch of the topics. Honestly, there wasn't anything that could hardly be considered controversial. The only drawback to making it viewable to the public is that people are forced to stand by their position, and I feel like that is more likely to make people be stubborn. Ideally, I'd like to see the MBR viewable to the public, but with the names of each poster being censored (maybe just assign numbers so you can tell which posts are from the same people). This way players in the MBR don't have to worry about the community trolling them for losing an argument, and they will be more likely to concede points they would otherwise be too attached to.

 

[Dimitris]

There's things to be said for a closed off Back Room too, right...

(don't fix it if it ain't broken; 'the masses' are not exactly known for their smarts; if it should be read by everyone, it's posted in the wrong place; everybody who thinks he can be of value to that kind of discussion, has a fair chance to get in...)

No fans of enlightened despotism?

 

[KishPrime]

If I'm not mistaken, they have the old MBR archives publically viewable somewhere.

That was because of me.

I'm from the old days when most Back Roomers discussed things in the open forums. The community as a whole could learn from those. I'm fine with private discussions for public education. Otherwise, at best, it's just a bunch of smart people chatting for their own enjoyment. It's not like there are any consequential decisions being made.

But that's my opinion. I just think the general rule should be that all threads are moved to public once concluded.

I'll start a Back Room topic about it.

 

[adumbrodeus]

I tend to prefer a closed BR in order to reduce to public pressure to prevent unpopular but necessary decisions, similar to the supreme court.

Let me guess. A thread with updates and summaries on stuff the MBR is discussing for the public to talk about?

Just saying, your avie is awesome. That is all.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

Haven't read the thread. Don't have time.

But as a new player trying to get into competitive Melee, a lack of guides on various characters makes it quite hard to break into the scene.

 

[Bones0]

I tend to prefer a closed BR in order to reduce to public pressure to prevent unpopular but necessary decisions, similar to the supreme court.

But there are many differences between the MBR and Supreme Court. They aren't elected, they are just a collection of good players who essentially grant themselves the position of Back Roomer. There are also no real "decisions" like Kish said. The MBR proposes guidelines for rule sets, but I'd say more than 50% of tournaments deviate from the current suggested rule set so what real impact does it have? The MBR can't influence opinions towards (what they deem is) a more progressive mindset if it's private. If they are going to share decisions, they might as well share the thought process behind those decisions. If I'm not mistaken, members of the Supreme Court congregate and write up a large summary of their decisions with a portion attributed to people who support the decision, as well as the dissenting opinions among the court who simply got out-voted.

 

[-Ran]

Brawl is the way that many people are getting into Melee. In my state, there are numerous Brawl players that have grown bored of the game due to playing it for 2+ year straight, that now are picking up Melee to have a reason to stay in the community. In Louisiana, the tournament numbers for my New Orleans monthlies are consistently around a 16 man bracket for Brawl and Melee, with each game beating the other out every once in awhile pending on who can't make it.

Just remember, the only competition Smash games have, are themselves.

 

[Strong Badam]

I think the eradication of Brawl is the best way to grow our community.

 

[N.A.G.A.C.E]

yea i was thinking about what -Ran wrote a the other day and he brings up a very important point. it is very possible to grow the community using brawl players, we just need to get rid of the idea of melee vs brawl b/c the two communities dont always get along (something everyone here knows). So what i am saying is maybe we shouldn't just put down brawl and make these people defensive instead we could just show them and teach them melee and maybe they will like it and switch or be in both communities.

 

[LatexRhombus]

not sure how many brawl players would go melee aside from the ones who already play it since there are obviously pretty different appeals; however, if people can attract brawl players, the benefit is they are already accustomed to the way the community works and what not, which would logically make them easier to retain.

 

[SSBMLahti]

Moving to Sudbury, Ontario would grow our community of 2 people.

 

[Theftz22]

In a active and thriving series, the older games rely heavily on the newest one to players into the community to then look at past games. But the melee community will always be a **** to the brawl community so you plug that outlet.

 

[4 Aces]

Haven't read the thread. Don't have time.

But as a new player trying to get into competitive Melee, a lack of guides on various characters makes it quite hard to break into the scene.

^This too.

Doesn't matter if there is a small super-outdated guide, as long as there is one, it'll help new players tons; while the outdated guide may seem lacking, it's a goldmine for newer players.

Or better yet, have maybe a good player with x character write a guide. That's how I got hooked on Fox. He was a daunting and intimidating character to try to get into, but CunningKitsune's guide was so amazingly detailed that it kept me going, giving me answers to any question I had. Once I became advanced and adept enough, the Q's and A's thread was what helped me fine-tune my Fox. Just one example of a great guide. Mogwai's Falco laser guide was good too.

Idk, nowadays all there ever are is Q's/A's threads, which can be really unappealing for newer players to try and get into.

 

[Doomolish]

I think the eradication of Brawl is the best way to grow our community.

^^^^ lol

We have exactly the same problem in Mexico but, as you might think, it's worse.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

Christ, don't bring this BS about "eradicating brawl". There are people who actually enjoy Brawl, myself being one of them.

Anyways, the guide issue is pretty major for characters below B tier or so. Right now I'm trying to learn Young Link and Game and Watch, and there is some decent info on Young Link, but not a hell of a lot on GaW. Oh wow, Hammer can't pull 1 or 2 on the first hammer. Can't pull the last two numbers. I main GaW in Brawl, I already know things like that.

Also, especially if you're trying to get Brawl players to switch over, somebody experienced in some characters should make a list of differences in switching from Brawl.

Like:
GaW doesn't have a shield in Melee.
Falco now falls like his clothes are made of lead. He also attacks like Fox, but his moves have different properties.

Simple stuff, since the average age of a Brawl player is lower than Melee players. Then make guides that go into depth. There surely isn't a lack of stuff to write guides on, since it HAS been 10 years.

I rambled a bit, but w/e.

 

[Beat!]

This is Melee Discussion. If someone thinks eradicating Brawl is the best way to go, then they are completely allowed to say so.

That being said

Eradicate Brawl

 

[Bones0]

Also, especially if you're trying to get Brawl players to switch over, somebody experienced in some characters should make a list of differences in switching from Brawl.

Like:
GaW doesn't have a shield in Melee.
Falco now falls like his clothes are made of lead. He also attacks like Fox, but his moves have different properties.

I've got one:
People will actually attack you instead of playing an 8 minute game of tag.

+1 for eradicating Brawl (or at least leeching players from them before the community completely implodes on itself)

 

[adumbrodeus]

This is Melee Discussion. If someone thinks eradicating Brawl is the best way to go, then they are completely allowed to say so.

That being said

Eradicate Brawl

The point is that it's the exact opposite way that we should go in order to actually improve the melee community. It creates a large divide which prevents the two communities from working together and works against cross-recruiting and ultimately will make people who honestly don't like brawl quit rather then playing melee.


There are exceptions, but in most cases, this is what I see.

 

[Bones0]

As much as I love just trolling Brawl, a part of me seriously doubts that there is any real viability of Melee recruiting players from Brawl. I can't imagine anyone who is currently playing Brawl now would change their mind about which game they favor. All the stories I've heard about people who switched are just people who got good at Brawl fairly quickly, and switched to Melee cause it's obviously more deep. At the risk of stereotyping Brawlers, I doubt they care about how deep the game they play is because anyone who did probably couldn't stand playing Brawl for more than a few months. It's painfully obvious at any competitive level above complete novice that the game promotes camping heavily, and anyone bothered enough by it to switch games will realize that on their own after seeing the trend in virtually every video where people spam projectiles and play "avoidance mindgames" for 8 minutes straight.

Brawl is simply for casual players, and recruiting casual-minded players for a game like Melee doesn't seem like an effective strategy at all. I would think it'd be much more efficient to spend our time convincing other competitive fighting game communities that Melee has much more to offer than the party-game label it's been carrying around for years. Even other competitive games like first person shooters or RTSs are valuable sources of new players, especially if you can catch their interest before they get engrained in the more traditional track of fighting games.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

As much as I love just trolling Brawl, a part of me seriously doubts that there is any real viability of Melee recruiting players from Brawl. I can't imagine anyone who is currently playing Brawl now would change their mind about which game they favor. All the stories I've heard about people who switched are just people who got good at Brawl fairly quickly, and switched to Melee cause it's obviously more deep. At the risk of stereotyping Brawlers, I doubt they care about how deep the game they play is because anyone who did probably couldn't stand playing Brawl for more than a few months. It's painfully obvious at any competitive level above complete novice that the game promotes camping heavily, and anyone bothered enough by it to switch games will realize that on their own after seeing the trend in virtually every video where people spam projectiles and play "avoidance mindgames" for 8 minutes straight.

Brawl is simply for casual players, and recruiting casual-minded players for a game like Melee doesn't seem like an effective strategy at all. I would think it'd be much more efficient to spend our time convincing other competitive fighting game communities that Melee has much more to offer than the party-game label it's been carrying around for years. Even other competitive games like first person shooters or RTSs are valuable sources of new players, especially if you can catch their interest before they get engrained in the more traditional track of fighting games.

It is because of posts like these that I'm extremely hesitant to get into competitive Melee. The Melee community is WAY too elitist. In general, you hate anyone who even thinks of playing Brawl. Any slight change to anything is enough for most Melee players to troll/flame the hell out of you. You people are under the mentality that Melee is perfect when it isn't. Your game has 2 characters with even or better matchups against every character in the game. You have a single character who with one move, DThrow, makes more than half the characters in the game unviable.

Aside from ranting, I have several main problems with Melee.

1) imho tournament standard should be PAL Melee. This is solely because of Sheik's down-throw wrecking pretty much every single character under B-Tier.
2) The stagelist. You can rant about "why legalize Poké Floats when you would always ban it against (I'm actually not sure, but I suspect Jigglypuff or some other aerial character "breaks" it), but why wouldn't low tiers want to CP a stage like this against, say, Sheik, so she can't **** them with chaingrabs.

All I can think of off the top of my head, been a long day and I'm exhausted right now.

 

[Dark Hart]

why does pointing out that Brawl doesn't have as much depth as Melee elitist?

who said Melee was perfect?

 

[Supreme Dirt]

Lots of people.

Given, my perspective of people who play Melee is heavily, heavily influenced by people trolling Brawl all the time.

Actually, I think that might be another obstacle to recruiting Brawl players. I'm sure I'm not the only one whose opinion of Melee players is pretty poor.

 

[Beat!]

I've never heard nor seen anyone claim melee is perfect.

 

[Bones0]

Not trying to be a ****, but it sounds like you're hesitant to get into Melee because it's hard, not because Melee players dislike Brawl. You are damn right I am elitist when I hear people try to compare an abomination like Brawl to Melee. I, nor any Melee player I know, thinks Melee is perfect, but it's balance both in characters and in specific game play functions is leagues above Brawl. It's hilarious you are going to sit here and rant about Melee tiers when people can't even agree who is top. Tons of people give Fox great matchup numbers, but you rarely see Foxes in the top 8, let alone in Grand Finals. Jman vs. Lucky was the most recent national with Foxes placing in the top, and I think you'd have to go as far back as when Mew2King played Fox to find another Fox winning a national. A few months ago, Jiggs was the most broken thing on the planet, but now I hear a lot of people admitting she's not that ridiculous. The current contender for broken is Falco as PP has been beasting everyone. The "best" character changes so frequently because Melee actually offers room for improvement. Brawl has been run by Metaknight since Day 1, and he has is OWN TIER for **** sake.

PAL is probably more balanced than NTSC, but the differences are negligible on an overall view of the game. Only in certain matchups do differences become evident, and even then it turns slightly unfavorable matchups into even matchups. I don't know where you are getting this idea that Sheik runs the metagame, considering the highest Sheik players are Mew2King (who also ***** with Marth) and Amsah (uhhhh, wait, that guy plays PAL OMG!).

The stage list? That isn't a construct of the game, but of the community. Counterpicks on the large definitely HURT low tiers more than they HELP them. There was even a discussion yesterday where Kage explained why keeping neutrals makes low tiers much more viable. It's only on wack-*** stages where the top characters become broken-beasts from the depths of Hell. You obviously have not clue what you're talking about if you think Jiggs camping can break ANY stage. Brawl may be broken because of all the floaty stalling, but the only stalling that happens in Melee is straight up running away because the character is simply too fast for the other. That's why a lot of people are moving away from counterpicks (my last tournament used a stage list of the 5 neutrals and PS, and everyone seemed to enjoy the fact that they didn't have to waste their bans on broken *** stages that never get played).

 

[N.A.G.A.C.E]

Bones i disagree with your post and here why. I know some people who have very recently switched from Brawl to melee. How i see it is that the basics before u go into the depth of the games are similar plus big tourneys usually have both games so that alone i believe is a good enough reason to try to recruit brawl players. But now to respond to your post more directly. Some brawl players just dont know melee well. Now what i mean by that is they got into smash through brawl and every time they try to play melee the lack of buffering feels to clunky for them, The thing about playing melee after being into brawl is its hard to get use to the feel of the game and this will put people off, people will be even less likely to switch when the people the play in melee insult the game they are coming from and dont help them get use to the game. i truly believe that many brawl players would be willing to give melee a chance if melee players made melee more accessible to brawl players.

Now supreme dirt: I dont think that many people are really under the impression melee is perfect, more that its better then brawl. You have to understand that melee players love there game and have stuck with it for years so emotions run deep u also need to understand that melee players are upset that brawl is not melee 2.0 b/c it hurt a bit when we saw we were not getting the game we have been waiting for for years. Also your complaints about the top tier (fox/falco being to good) while it is true they are very good it has been proven they are not unbeatable by lower tier characters and by other players skill. look at what people from AZ are able to do, it shows that melee has some solid balance to it. Also sheik's d-throw is good but it does not make characters unviable, it just makes the MU much harder but in melee through precision and skill u can over come character flaws.

Also its unreasonable to think people can/will start using the pal version. from what i know of the Pal version i think i agree thats it might be better for tourneys since it seems more balanced, but u play the version u got and the version we have is not very unbalanced and the change is not something to drastic (if it was European players would not be doing as well as they are when they come here)

 

[Marth307]

It is because of posts like these that I'm extremely hesitant to get into competitive Melee. The Melee community is WAY too elitist. In general, you hate anyone who even thinks of playing Brawl. Any slight change to anything is enough for most Melee players to troll/flame the hell out of you. You people are under the mentality that Melee is perfect when it isn't. Your game has 2 characters with even or better matchups against every character in the game. You have a single character who with one move, DThrow, makes more than half the characters in the game unviable.

Aside from ranting, I have several main problems with Melee.

1) imho tournament standard should be PAL Melee. This is solely because of Sheik's down-throw wrecking pretty much every single character under B-Tier.
2) The stagelist. You can rant about "why legalize Poké Floats when you would always ban it against (I'm actually not sure, but I suspect Jigglypuff or some other aerial character "breaks" it), but why wouldn't low tiers want to CP a stage like this against, say, Sheik, so she can't **** them with chaingrabs.

All I can think of off the top of my head, been a long day and I'm exhausted right now.

Us melee players arn't being elitist were being REALISTS
Every Pro Brawl vid i have seen is all camping where as with melee there is an acual fight thats entertaining to watch on top of being fun to play.I have never seen anyone ever claim melee is perfect.It is harder than brawl though.Dont whine about us being elitists because were not,we just have the patience to endure a learning curve much greater than brawls. Have a nice day troll

 

[Supreme Dirt]

I'm going to wait until tomorrow to post anything more. I'm just too tired right now to really post anything coherent.

 

[Marth307]

ROFL he cant think of a comeback because Melee>Brawl
if anything brawl is more broken then melee MK HAS HIS OWN TIER
at least in melee s tier is shared by multiple char.

 

[N.A.G.A.C.E]

look i believe that melee>brawl but its this attitude of shoving this in brawl players faces that makes then defensive and less willing to try or to like melee. maybe instead of everyone just going melee>brawl maybe someone could give reasons in a non brawl bashing manner or teach brawl players why melee is fun. Brawl is a younger community which i believe could easily be tapped into to create more melee players. We just need to do it the right way

 

[Dark Hart]

Brawl is to Melee

as

Scientology is to Rational Independent Thought

 

[Massive]

PAL version only works on PAL TVs.
I'm not buying a 50Hz tv just for melee, no thank you sir.

Brawl players can convert to melee, that should be one of our core missions, really.
Everyone I know who played melee competitively first came back to it.

Most brawl players opposed to playing melee have never had their feeling of superiority shattered before they entered the competitive scene. Playing brawl vs level 9s or even online will adequately prepare you to play real people, the game itself prevents you from feeling completely outclassed since your opponents will always trip or you will be able to dodge their combos.

Melee vs people is a completely different beast than vs computers. Your first experience with a much-better-than-you player is what separates melee people from non-melee people.

If your reaction to getting brutally destroyed your first time is to quit, you probably wouldn't have gotten much better at brawl or melee anyway.
If your reaction is a desire to overcome it and become better, welcome to the community.

 

[Strong Badam]

Motivated vs. Unmotivated Gamers~

 

[Marth307]

Brawl is to Melee

as

Scientology is to Rational Independent Thought

Sounds about right Darkhart FTW

 

[-Ran]

As much as I love just trolling Brawl, a part of me seriously doubts that there is any real viability of Melee recruiting players from Brawl. I can't imagine anyone who is currently playing Brawl now would change their mind about which game they favor. All the stories I've heard about people who switched are just people who got good at Brawl fairly quickly, and switched to Melee cause it's obviously more deep. At the risk of stereotyping Brawlers, I doubt they care about how deep the game they play is because anyone who did probably couldn't stand playing Brawl for more than a few months. It's painfully obvious at any competitive level above complete novice that the game promotes camping heavily, and anyone bothered enough by it to switch games will realize that on their own after seeing the trend in virtually every video where people spam projectiles and play "avoidance mindgames" for 8 minutes straight.

Brawl is simply for casual players, and recruiting casual-minded players for a game like Melee doesn't seem like an effective strategy at all. I would think it'd be much more efficient to spend our time convincing other competitive fighting game communities that Melee has much more to offer than the party-game label it's been carrying around for years. Even other competitive games like first person shooters or RTSs are valuable sources of new players, especially if you can catch their interest before they get engrained in the more traditional track of fighting games.

There are currently two players in my city making the changes. We're actively out placing some Melee players that have been playing the games for years. Some people complain that we're bringing gay into the game, since we play overtly safe since we are still learning our proper follow ups, but the thing is, Brawl is an AMAZING starting point for someone going into Melee. A good Brawl player is going to bring SDI/DI, spacing/zoning, general Smash knowledge, and a different tempo to the table.

Also, every Melee scene should attach to the Brawl scene. There's such a large overlap of players, it's easy to run the tournament side by side. Or, if you want, you can just bring a set up to TEACH the Brawl players if they want to learn. I don't mean JV 4 stock them, but actually show them how to learn. I'm not particularly good at Melee, but I have a lot of Brawl players asking me to teach them now since I've taken a break from Brawl.

 

[LatexRhombus]

although i personally doubt the ability to "convert" brawl players to the competitive melee scene, there definitely doesn't need to be an argument about whether people think melee is perfect...

that being said, completely new players are more likely to want to play brawl because it is newer. everyone wants to try out the most advanced version of everything; although you can disagree with this, once the iphone 4 comes out, people tend not to go back and buy previous versions..so the point is, if brawl can actually serve to attract new players, who then are more likely to be exposed to melee, it is possible; again, i'm not really thinking that it will really get a large number of people involved with melee, but every player counts

 

[-Ran]

It's not a matter of converting. People are going to want to stay in the scene when they are done with the game. I routinely have Melee players join the Novice bracket in Brawl to have some fun, and now that we've become such great friends, Brawl players are bleeding into Melee. This last tournament, we were low on Teams to the point where it wasn't going to happen. Four Brawl players that had some Melee experience, decided to enter the event so that it would happen.

Umad? Louisiana is legit.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

I'm just waiting for raging against my Young Link. I literally was up until 5 this morning, practicing my spacing, getting used to how his moves work, all that stuff. Going to play so ****ing campy, make you think it's summertime.

 

[-Ran]

The Dibbz LCD tvs aren't laggy because the owners hunted for specific ones for gaming. They actually returned numerous brands/types after they failed the test each gaming community did to them. They have been tested numerous times, by countless players. Anyone who claims that they have more than a frame of lag needs to get a reality check. Every Melee tournament has used them, and if they wished, they could bring their own tvs for the event like the Brawl players do, since we need set ups outside of the five ones we get from the Lan Center.

And you know what? They don't bring them, since the LCDs are fine.