Community Growth Discussion

[Marth307]

Damn supreme dirt is stil troing this damn thread I agree with bones0...because he is right

 

[Eccentricities]

Oh yeah, he'll lose, but he has a good understanding of how Falco's moves interact. I mean, he absolutely shocked me by knowing how to pillar once.

How did he pillar if this Falco doesn't L-Cancel?

 

[Divinokage]

I think Brawl might off soften us a little too much. As a recent idea, if you give people reasons as to why they need to prove themselves then it will spark more interest. You know friendly drama, some hate. To me this fury will definitely make people want to do MMs and then they will grow because there's no more choice. They'll grow because they will do EVERYTHING in their power to beat the opponent they want to beat. And then the salt will spread and now the other would want to MM the person back to prove he can beat him.

At least here I feel like there's a lack of this going on and it needs to be done if you want a stronger and higher level scene. I also think it's probably true with most parts of the world. Even if you are good friends, who cares.. put that money down, feel the pressure.. prove you can be on top. Anyways, I think this is relevant if you want to keep people interested.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

How did he pillar if this Falco doesn't L-Cancel?

He only L-Cancels doing the one thing.

See, he uses Z for all his aerials.

He doesn't realize exactly what he's doing is L-Canceling, only that it lets him act faster. It's the only time he does it.

 

[Eccentricities]

He only L-Cancels doing the one thing.

See, he uses Z for all his aerials.

He doesn't realize exactly what he's doing is L-Canceling, only that it lets him act faster. It's the only time he does it.

I see. Have you told him L-Canceling is applicable in other areas?

Anyways, hopefully you can make it out to Mississauga, we're a Melee region now.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

Yeah, I'm trying to get him better. He has exams right now though.

 

[Hax]

here are my pointers for making melee bigger:

*make character guides/REAL advice threads (all the character-specific advice threads have turned into social threads). melee is a complicated game which makes it less inviting; if top pros would work together to write guides for their characters then newer players would have something to study
*stop profiting off of venue fee/make venue fee as cheap as possible. i understand that making $ off of venue fee is a legitimate business but if that's how you plan to make money, then be considerate and host tournies for a huge game such as MVC3. charging $10 venue is a huge turn-off, which is the last thing a small community needs
*invite noobs to smashfests. back in '06, D1 took me under his wing and trained me all the time. i'm indebted to the time he sacrificed so that he could train me; it took me 1.5 years of playing to become 2nd best in NY because of him. if noobs see that they're making progress, they'll continue playing and perhaps invite their friends to play as well
*give off a professional/mature appearance. looking back at it, the pokemon theme song at pound made us look like a joke. "go peepee go peepee go" was kindof childish also but not as bad. these things may be funny within our community but are huge turn-offs to outside viewers
*eliminate scandals/have a no-tolerance policy for acts against the community. i can name SOOO many people that should have been banned from tournaments but weren't; this is the only community ive seen that tolerates stuff like people owing thousands of dollars or physical violence at tournaments. the worst example would be plank stealing $10k and getting away with it..

 

[Bones0]

here are my pointers for making melee bigger:

*make character guides/REAL advice threads (all the character-specific advice threads have turned into social threads). melee is a complicated game which makes it less inviting; if top pros would work together to write guides for their characters then newer players would have something to study
*stop profiting off of venue fee/make venue fee as cheap as possible. i understand that making $ off of venue fee is a legitimate business but if that's how you plan to make money, then be considerate and host tournies for a huge game such as MVC3. charging $10 venue is a huge turn-off, which is the last thing a small community needs
*invite noobs to smashfests. back in '06, D1 took me under his wing and trained me all the time. i'm indebted to the time he sacrificed so that he could train me; it took me 1.5 years of playing to become 2nd best in NY because of him. if noobs see that they're making progress, they'll continue playing and perhaps invite their friends to play as well
*give off a professional/mature appearance. looking back at it, the pokemon theme song at pound made us look like a joke. "go peepee go peepee go" was kindof childish also but not as bad. these things may be funny within our community but are huge turn-offs to outside viewers
*eliminate scandals/have a no-tolerance policy for acts against the community. i can name SOOO many people that should have been banned from tournaments but weren't; this is the only community ive seen that tolerates stuff like people owing thousands of dollars or physical violence at tournaments. the worst example would be plank stealing $10k and getting away with it..

lol WUT?

Also, anyone who is turned away by the Pokemon theme song isn't going to play a competitive video game with Pokemon as characters...

 

[tarheeljks]

*make character guides/REAL advice threads (all the character-specific advice threads have turned into social threads). melee is a complicated game which makes it less inviting; if top pros would work together to write guides for their characters then newer players would have something to study

this is a good point. the falco forum is arguably the best character forum going right now b/c of players' willingness to discuss and critique, with peepee being the catalyst. he responds to a wide range of posts whether they be from scrubs like myself, from other top players, or those in between, which keeps the thread active by offering varying levels of discussion. i don't mean to make it sound like he's the only one putting in work in that thread b/c there are many others who make significant contributions; however his status carries a lot of weight


contrast this w/the falcon forum (sorry to pick on you guys), where the main thread houses a lot of off topic discussion (i have contributed to it a couple of times). granted it has been far more on point since ~pound v w/scar restoring some order and s2j offering advice-- when he isn't banned lol-- and every large thread is going to have some ot talk but it derails easily

 

[Bones0]

Even with PP and other good Falco players offering some valuable discussion, I feel like most of it is fairly useless for someone just starting out. I feel like Hax was referring to something more along the lines of a basic instructional guide, like this:

Falco
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_CrTWvKpRQ

Fox
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yo5GrbFM1fE

I think these videos could have been organized a lot better in terms of which tactics come first and which come second, but they are certainly better than a newbie coming to Smashboards and trying to grasp the high-level concepts PP discusses. That was my take on it, anyway.

 

[tarheeljks]

true, i was referring more to him noting that the character threads have largely become social forums

 

[Mooo]

here are my pointers for making melee bigger:

*make character guides/REAL advice threads (all the character-specific advice threads have turned into social threads). melee is a complicated game which makes it less inviting; if top pros would work together to write guides for their characters then newer players would have something to study
*stop profiting off of venue fee/make venue fee as cheap as possible. i understand that making $ off of venue fee is a legitimate business but if that's how you plan to make money, then be considerate and host tournies for a huge game such as MVC3. charging $10 venue is a huge turn-off, which is the last thing a small community needs
*invite noobs to smashfests. back in '06, D1 took me under his wing and trained me all the time. i'm indebted to the time he sacrificed so that he could train me; it took me 1.5 years of playing to become 2nd best in NY because of him. if noobs see that they're making progress, they'll continue playing and perhaps invite their friends to play as well
*give off a professional/mature appearance. looking back at it, the pokemon theme song at pound made us look like a joke. "go peepee go peepee go" was kindof childish also but not as bad. these things may be funny within our community but are huge turn-offs to outside viewers
*eliminate scandals/have a no-tolerance policy for acts against the community. i can name SOOO many people that should have been banned from tournaments but weren't; this is the only community ive seen that tolerates stuff like people owing thousands of dollars or physical violence at tournaments. the worst example would be plank stealing $10k and getting away with it..

As a 4 months year old player, I agree on all of these points except the professional/mature appearance. I myself got sucked into Melee by watching videos with mad hype commentary, which made me go like "that's kinda cool, I wanna participate in a hyped match as well, so I need to start getting good". The scandals thing, I'm not too sure, if someone is not in the community, he might not care about stuff that happens and might not even be up to date on such things.
The thing with the Character/Matchups guides is very very true. I was able to get an understanding of the basic techskill and even harder stuff like a few multishines through practice and youtube guides. I think it was StriCNYN3s guide and it really helped me getting into the game, but right now I'm at the point where not the techs are the main problem in my games but the DI and mindgames are. Both of those things could be really improved if I got to play more people on a regular basis (which gives support for your smashfest point), but I also feel like there should be more guides on basic mindgames for the respective characters and also maybe common comboes for certain matchups, because this is where I imagine a lot of people, including me, getting confused.
Also: matchup guides in general haven't been a problem for me as a Falco, they are really good in the Falco boards, but for Jiggs and Falcon and maybe even Marth and then all the low tiers, this really could be a problem for quite a few players.

 

[Dr Peepee]

Well the Falco forums also have Mogwai's guide or I'd consider writing a Falco basics thing myself.

I'm good at writing things, not making videos, so if anyone has a suggestion about having me write up something to help out newer players I'd be interested in it.

I also answer noob questions in my thread as well if someone hasn't beaten me to it by the time I read it.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

Y'know, a lot of people who might be interested in the scene might not play high tiers, somebody getting on guides for mid-low tier characters would probably be a good idea.

 

[Divinokage]

Y'know, a lot of people who might be interested in the scene might not play high tiers, somebody getting on guides for mid-low tier characters would probably be a good idea.

Ok but a good guide generally requires good credibility. There's not that many low tier players to begin with and even less that are pro.. and even less that are willing to write down a very long guide.

Edit: We need more crazy people that want to prove themselves as low tier masters. =P

 

[Hax]

i shouldn't have used the word "professional." i'm all for immature, funny commentary; i should have said "don't be gay." i just think the pokemon theme song made us look like a bunch of little kids, even if melee is a hardcore game. proof that this damaged our reputation are the threads that were made on SRK bashing us because of it

 

[Supreme Dirt]

So what? **** SRK. Our game has Pokémon in it, why shouldn't we have the Pokémon theme song playing?

 

[Cactuar]

I haven't posted about the pokemon theme song thing.

My official stance is that you guys should do what you want in the name of fun.



My unofficial stance is that the majority of the people who participated in that have no idea how their actions affect the image of this community. Saying "who cares what other people think?" is incredibly ignorant. We, as a community, are struggling to keep ourselves alive and secure a position as a legitimate fighting game. Everyone who plays Melee knows how amazing it is, but the truth is that, at surface, it really does look like kiddy bull****. We need to have some sense of maturity to help other people look past that kiddy image and see the same depth and complex gameplay that we do. If people look in and see us singing Pokemon, they are immediately going to look away and further spread the idea that Melee isn't worth anyones time.



Edit: Removed some brawl bashing. Even though it is totally relevant.

 

[Divinokage]

Well it would be a lot more approriate for the Brawl community to sing the pokemon theme song, we definitely don't need that. =P

 

[0Room]

contrast this w/the falcon forum (sorry to pick on you guys), where the main thread houses a lot of off topic discussion (i have contributed to it a couple of times). granted it has been far more on point since ~pound v w/scar restoring some order and s2j offering advice-- when he isn't banned lol-- and every large thread is going to have some ot talk but it derails easily

Lol you're so right
But this is mostly for multiple reasons

Most of the players on the boards are developed enough that we don't necessarily have specific questions.
For new players there's also the Video Critique Forum, and most people take stuff there, and there is a much more in depth discussion.
Also, around Pound time we actually had a fairly in depth discussion about actual characters, people were surprised about how much we were on topic

 

[ChivalRuse]

People are posting some amazing stuff in here. I'm gonna have to go back and read some of the posts I missed.

 

[0Room]

There are so many good ideas and discussion ideas in this forum O_o

This might actually be really helpful.

I would love to see if someone that frequents a character specific board would be willing to do this for the character of their choice.

A lot of new comers would benefit and I could just direct everyone to *insert how to play character*.

I would love to do this, but here's the question: Where do you put it where it'll be seen?
As Hax was talking about earlier, pros rarely ever get on, [especially on Falcon Forums, where Scar's in charge and has a full time job now from what I can tell] and while I do have a youtube account, it's not exactly HMW's channel.

You think it would just be good to upload it, and then PM them to add it, or something?

As far as videos to create, I don't think we need to go character specific. There aren't that many character specific techs that beginners will need. Shine stuff would probably have to be mentioned, and maybe a few projectile techniques, but most could be left for them reading. I feel like the biggest issue is new players have a general idea of what they are supposed to do (watching a few videos of any character generally gives you a good idea of this), but they don't know HOW to set up those instances. You can tell a new player that Falco's nair is good for approaching, but if he doesn't know how to use lasers to keep his opponent locked down and how to use dash dancing to make sure it's safe to nair it won't help him at all. He will just throw out predictable nairs and wonder why every other Falco player can do it.

There should be a video series that covers a list of general techniques and tactics that can apply to any character. Then there could be related text guides that give a BRIEF break down of character specifics (like for the "Approaching" video, players would go to the thread for the video and read about their specific character's best moves for approaching and best set-ups to do so safely). For many of these, there could be multiple videos, and if people are willing to do videos for specific characters, that'd be we better than just having the thread. Here's the kind of stuff I was thinking:

- Stage Spacing (abstract and pretty advanced, but new players should be introduced to this asap so they can continue to build on it as they improve since it's so crucial to improvement; dash dancing; WDing; wave landing)
- Spacing Attacks (sweet spots vs. sour spots; disjointedness and priority; avoiding shield grabs)
- Directional Influence (normal DI; DIing perpendicularly into corners to live longer; crouch canceling; crouch cancel counters; ASDI; SDI)
- Approaching (a little bit of specific stage spacing and attack spacing; best attacks)
- Mindgames/Baiting (manipulation of opponents; simple things like dash forward, WD back or empty SHs -> grab)
- Punishing (shield grabbing bad aerials;
- Teching (when to tech; which way to tech: left, right, in place, or missing techs into rolls/get up attack; avoiding jab resets)
- Tech Chasing (spacing on opponents who missed a tech to cover options; how to best punish each tech option; jab resets)
- Ledge Tactics (wave landing; using invincibility)
- Edge Guarding (edge hogging; ledge hopping attacks)
- Recovering (best done by character dependence, but not all of it; recovering high vs. low; using walls to your advantage; ledge-teching)
- Chain grabbing (matchups where it is prevalent; percentages it is effective; pivot grabbing)
- Power Shielding (running power shielding; best options after power shields; mixups to avoid people powershielding against you)
- Shielding (light vs. hard shield; tilting to cover poke areas and mess up L-cancels; options OOS such as jumping, WDing, shield dropping)
- Avoidance (spot dodging; rolling; air dodging)


I could go on for years because as you can tell, I'm basically trying to summarizing the entire metagame of Melee into a list of labels and it's not that simple. You might also notice how much topics vary in their own properties. Some are very vague, other very specific. I'm sure as other people mention things that could also be discussed in the video, we'd realize we have 3 different areas of a single subject. I'd imagine that if we already had short tutorials for each of these (maybe just 3-4 minutes long each) that new players would already be MUCH more enthusiastic about learning to play because it'd be much more organized. As it is now, players are introduced to tactics with no semblance of connectivity.

With a series of videos like these, players can see a much obvious connection between Mindgames/Baiting and how Punishing follows right after. They will learn to bait, and then once they realize they are baiting correctly, they can learn to punish correctly. As they focus on each tactic separately, they will practice much more efficiently and improve much more quickly than if all of these were thrown at them at once and they tried to learn an entire encyclopedia of Smash wisdom. If anyone is actually still reading this Wall of Text, what do you think? I'd be more than happy to make a new thread to make this an actual project. I can't record anything myself, but I feel like I know enough about the game to create a general outline of most of the tactics and game play mechanics, and then people can help to fill in the gaps. Once we have a general outline, it will just be a matter of getting people to take an hour or two out of their day to record some game play and upload it with a bunch of text that would hopefully already be prepared to explain what is in the video.

Also, I like this post, but I feel like it's a bit in depth for a "just learning" video. Are we talking about multiple videos, and they get more and more in depth as we go on?
Telling a brand new player all of this stuff is just going to get confusing.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

The old Advanced How to Play videos were pretty great. They helped me get into Melee about 5 months ago now. Perhaps using those as a base would help.

 

[AlcyoNite]

The old Advanced How to Play videos were pretty great. They helped me get into Melee about 5 months ago now. Perhaps using those as a base would help.

this

i watched those videos many, many, MANY times.

They are very well made and still very relevant. If someone could make a video series that were more up to date, and still as visually entertaining/effective pedagogically, that would be awesome.

 

[0Room]

Definitely. I'm planning on it for Falcon in particular.
Here's an outline for some of the ideas I'm thinking of

http://www.smashboards.com/showpost.php?p=12540323&postcount=16681

I'm also thinking about discussing a lot more conceptual things in the game, such as the importance of grabs and the mental aspect of grabbing your opponent and taking control of the match. I think a lot of people kind of need that discussion of the game, as well as technical things such as WDing.

 

[Hax]

you can say **** SRK, but that'd be going against community growth. the pokemon theme song clearly had a negative effect on our image - SRK's responses are proof of this. i know it was fun for some of you guys, but IMO it should have been withheld for the sake of making our community look more like one an outsider would want to join

 

[JPOBS]

I think we should all get over the Pokemon theme song thing.
It happened in the moment. Once something fun like that has started, it rippled through the crowd on a wave of emotion caught up in a epic grand finals. No one was going to stop to think "hey, if SRK sees these vids they will hate us, lets not sing" while in the moment.

SRK has always hated our community, this hasn't changed anything, its not like they were on the verge of accepting us and then this happened, and suddenly they hate us again. Nay, this is just another thing to add to their already stupid list of why they hate us.

I understand the plea that maybe it shouldn't happen in the future, but if something similar was to happen again the same thing would happen; in the moment, no one will consider stopping just because "it makes us look bad".

Although I haven't seen these threads Hax is talking about, I'd like to if anyone wouldn't mind linking me.

*realizes what his avatar and location are while typing this*...*shrugs* I ain't even mad.

 

[King Funk]

95% of people playing Smash right now play because they were initially drawn to it as part of the Nintendo fanbase. And that includes Pokemon. That's where most of us came from. Did you forget that? If people from other communities can't understand that, it's natural they don't understand why people sing the Pokemon theme song. But to be honest, the Pokemon theme song is not really sung because people love it, but rather as a funny meme and as a way to generate some hype. You don't like the "kiddy image" we project to the other communities? What can we do then? We play a game with NINTENDO characters. We play a game that wasn't MEANT to be competitive. And as we play this game, the average age of players is FAR lower than other fighting game communities. Those are "problems" (not really) far bigger than the little Pokemon theme song extravaganza during the PP Armada finals. But it's moments like this that shows that we're a warm, fun-loving and great community.

And who really cares about what some idiots on SRK say? If they seriously bash our community for trivial things like that, I doubt it's important people. =S

They're probably similar to those trolls who like to post all over YouTube gaming videos that they have a girlfriend, and that gamers should get a life. xD

 

[Lovage]

yup pokemon song was gay as ****

 

[tarheeljks]

You don't like the "kiddy image" we project to the other communities? What can we do then? We play a game with NINTENDO characters. We play a game that wasn't MEANT to be competitive. And as we play this game, the average age of players is FAR lower than other fighting game communities. Those are "problems" (not really) far bigger than the little Pokemon theme song extravaganza during the PP Armada finals. But it's moments like this that shows that we're a warm, fun-loving and great community.

And who really cares about what some idiots on SRK say? If they seriously bash our community for trivial things like that, I doubt it's important people. =S

re: the pokemon theme song, the community has to reconcile goals of expansion w/the "who cares" attitude. who cares? you do if you want more people to play. the issue w/claiming those bashing it are not important is that even if they are not, that doesn't mean it has no negative effects. for example, many people's exposure to smash is limited to events like the song. the problems (age, origins of game etc) are hurdles and it is better (w/regards to image) not to substantiate them or to reinforce misconceptions.

now, if most of the community feels that it was fun, haters be damned, then ok. that is the community's prerogative. i am noting that there are detrimental effects on a larger scale regardless of whether people like the fact that they are detrimental. i am not arguing in favor of extreme levels of conformity, or that the community needs to strip its soul; however, a willingness to appeal to those outside of the community is prudent


edit: prudent in so far as the community actively seeks to grow. the community shouldn't simply thumb its nose at the fact that misconceptions about the game exist-- quite the opposite in fact-- and it should especially minimize behavior that reinforces said misconceptions

 

[Cobalt]

SRK has always hated our community, this hasn't changed anything, its not like they were on the verge of accepting us and then this happened, and suddenly they hate us again. Nay, this is just another thing to add to their already stupid list of why they hate us.

And who really cares about what some idiots on SRK say? If they seriously bash our community for trivial things like that, I doubt it's important people. =S

This is one of the things that I think is holding the Melee community back. There is a ridiculous level of animosity toward the premier fighting game community in the world. One of the things that the Melee community needs to understand is that SRK is a better community than SmashBoards. Part of this is the reason that King Funk mentioned earlier--Melee, and Smash in general attracts younger players. When SRK views us as a bunch of kids, they're right. Another reason is SRK's much larger size, which allows the general community to be much more active. SRK's videos and streaming are of much higher quality, their homepage actually serves a purpose, and their strategy forums are much better organized with more information. We're only now getting characters' frame data and hitboxes. After ten years. Yes I know we've had the raw data for longer.

This problem isn't helped by the fact that whenever we try to defend Smash to SRK, the usual course of action seems to be to call SRK idiots who are too emasculated by the fact that Smash uses Nintendo characters.

For the Smash community to grow, people need to stop antagonizing a legitimately better community. We can learn from SRK. They've done a hell of a lot of things right, and not reaching out to them to help our own community is pretty damn petty. But to do this we have to fix the general perception of each site on each other's sites.

On the SmashBoards end, people need to learn to appreciate what traditional fighters, especially 2D fighters, bring to a competitive community. Guaranteed combos make punishment far more reliable, so the risk of a misread is generally much greater. Pressure is more solidified and refined into a few categories: cross-ups, high-low mixups, stagger pressure, and how all of this acts in the corner. Melee on the other hand is much less well-defined, with the potential for shield stabbing, character positioning relative to platforms, stage hazards like wind or shy guys, etc. Melee also has the unique feature of DI, which has valid positives and negatives that I'll get into later. The important thing here is that 2D fighters codify and refine many aspects that also exist in Melee, which simplifies the basic struggle of the game: reading your opponent and acting appropriately. This is a good thing--it means other aspects of the game lie very much secondary to reads. The most important part of the game is brought to the absolute forefront in 2D fighters, where in Melee it can often be made up for or simulated with tech skill or positioning.

Now, there are good reasons why Melee should be considered a legitimate competitive game. But the important thing is to frame this in a way 2D fighter players appreciate. This is true of mostly anything--if you want to get someone to appreciate something, frame it in a way that makes it easier for them.

First of all, Smash is not a fighter. In the strictest sense of the word "fighter," in that you have multiple players trying to hit each other, sure. But that label isn't useful because it doesn't say anything beyond "Players try to hit each other." In useful terms, a fighter is a game in which two players have a health bar, and try to hit each other to reduce that health bar while on a flat surface, where getting hits often leads into pre-defined (or pre-definable) guaranteed combos, until one person runs out of health. 2D fighters occur on a plane; 3D fighters occur in space. Clearly this label doesn't apply to Smash, but it applies to Super, Marvel, BlazBlue, Tekken, Arcana Heart, what have you. Calling Smash a "fighter" implies gameplay similarity to those games, but that similarity is minor, at best. We shouldn't use the term because it implies that we're trying to treat Smash as a traditional fighter, which is wrong and worthy of criticism from SRK.

So we know how 2D fighters refine and separate reads and punishment. How does Smash implement these things? I'll talk about Melee since I don't know much at all about Brawl. Reading in Melee is, in principle, quite similar to reading in 2D fighters. When you can predict what your opponent is going to do, you can choose an option available to you that either beats your opponent's option, or more generally, puts you in an advantageous situation.

The easiest example would be Falco shield pressure. Leaving grabbing aside, Falco has a couple of options once he has landed his first shine. He can do a close early aerial, which beats grabs, upsmash, and most up-B's out of shield, and depending on the opponent's shield's health, has the potential to shield stab. But it also makes continuing pressure risky, since he's vulnerable for a time before he gets his next shine. He can do a late aerial, which loses to immediate out of shield options, but guarantees continued pressure if the opponent keeps shielding. He can do a fadeaway aerial which instantly ends pressure but usually keeps him safe, possibly allowing him to punish out of shield attacks.

Both Falco and his target have to try to read each other here. The Falco has to predict whether his opponent will keep shielding (to beat early aerials), attempt to attack (to beat late aerials), or evacuate with wavedashing/rolling (to reset to neutral). Similarly the opponent has to predict whether the Falco will early aerial, late aerial, fadeaway aerial, or do some super read with like shine-laser to catch rolling or something. This has a very nice analog in 2D fighter pressure. All of these pressure options Falco has are comparable to high-low mixups and stagger pressure. Opponents' out of shield options are comparable to mashing out, DPing, or depending on the game, jumping out/chicken blocking. There's an important thing to remember about this scenario though, which I'll get to in a bit.

So that's how pressure compares between Smash and 2D fighters. How do reads at neutral work? Well, projectiles at least are weird. They still control space, which is the primary function of a 2D fighter projectile, but many do other things better. Projectiles good at controlling space are: Falco's laser, (Young) Link's bombs and boomerang, Samus's missiles, Peach's turnips, and Sheik's needles. Doc's and Pikachu's projectiles are usually for covering themselves, and most other projectiles are either very situational (Ness, Yoshi) or are used almost strictly for damage/knockback (Mewtwo, Samus's Charge Shot). Compare this to Super, where most projectiles travel effectively horizontally (Ryu/Ken, Cody, Rose, Sagat, etc.) and are used to force the opponent to either block or jump, neither of which are particularly good.

Apart from that, how else do neutral reads work? In most 2D fighters, players are going to be zoning each other with whatever tools they have until they either see an opportunity to approach and pressure, or start getting pressured themselves. This is also quite similar to Melee. Two players at neutral are going to be weaving around, throwing out whatever safe zoning tools they have, trying to position themselves advantageously over their opponent. Once they've done this, they can exploit the advantage. An easy example: At neutral are a Sheik and Marth. Both characters will move around the stage and platforms trying to get in their ideal positions. Marth will try to position himself directly under Sheik. Sheik will try to do the same, or position herself diagonally above Marth (for needles -> pressure). Marth will throw out zoning fairs or nairs to cover positioning if Sheik should approach. As this is happening, if a player finds that he has read his opponent's next move correctly and is now in the position he wants (or followed movement and now has landed a grab), then he can exploit the advantage he's gotten.

Notice how the 2D fighter version is a more refined and simplified version of the same concept.

Anyway, that's enough about that. Let's talk about the biggest difference between Melee and 2D fighters: punishment. Actually getting combos is pretty similar: hitconfirming off of a read while pressuring, or punishing your opponent's misread. But in Melee, we have percentage-based knockback and DI. This means we don't have listed, pre-defined combos like fighters have. This is both fortunate and unfortunate. It means that players need more knowledge of game mechanics to understand where and how far a move will send their opponent, and for how long they'll be in hitstun. 2D fighters on the other hand only need to know the general hitbox properties of a move and its proration to be able to string together ad-hoc combos into listed ones. Is the extra knowledge requirement in Melee a good thing? Probably not. It just adds to the skill floor. But DI is an absolutely wonderful topic to talk about, so let's do that.

DI has many things going for it, but whether they're good or bad is entirely dependent on your punishment philosophy, which is what makes the mechanic so amazing. In general, DI allows a player to interact with his punishment to try to lessen the disadvantage he suffers because of it, either by changing knockback to end a combo early, or by causing the combo to end in such a way that you can reset to neutral without losing a stock. I'm willing to say this is pretty much strictly better than, say, Melty Blood's system where if you press buttons as you get comboed, you just take less damage. So you would think this is just a good thing, right? Players get another opportunity to read how their opponent is going to act ("Where will he move/what will he do to combo me?" vs. "Where will he DI so I can follow and continue?"), which adds more depth to the game.

But this weakens punishment. In most 2D fighters, when you mess up, punishment is guaranteed. It makes misreads very risky, especially if you are punished with an awesome hitconfirm. But with DI, when you can lessen the severity of your punishment, you are free to misread more. Your philosophy can decide what's better: players needing to work for their punishes as an extra layer of reading, or players getting guaranteed punishes to make misreads far more dangerous.

Alright, so enough about the similarities and differences between reading in Smash and 2D fighters. The biggest thing to take out of that anyway is just that contrary to how it appears, reading is still the most fundamental aspect of Melee as it is in 2D fighters. I feel like a lot of 2D fighter players don't see that, which is entirely understandable given the high mechanical skill floor that exists in Melee. That said, there are many common complaints about the game itself from 2D fighter players. Between browsing SRK and talking with my 2D fighter-playing friends, I've seen a lot of legitimate criticisms. But at least between my friends and I, we've worked out a reconciliation to the point that we all understand the values offered by each game.

So, criticisms. First one: "The game was never meant to be competitive; it uses Nintendo characters and has **** like the Bob-omb for crying out loud. You have to massively change the rules just to make the game acceptable." All of this is true. But I maintain that with the rules changed as we have, Melee is a legitimate competitive game based on the same concepts of reading and punishment as 2D fighters. It doesn't really matter what the game originally was as long as the product we've created works.

Next: "The mechanical skill floor is unnecessarily high. You can be outsmarted by an opponent and still win if you're better at execution." Also true. L-canceling is a dumb mechanic when your game is based on your ability to out-think your opponent, since the thought involved in deciding to L-cancel is absolutely minimal. Additionally, when you can make up for a lack of reads by being faster enough than your opponent that they can't physically perform the options that beat yours, the game's identity as being based on thought degrades rapidly. This is a legitimate complaint that there's no real answer to. Melee favors mechanical ability far more than 2D fighters generally do. One benefit this does add is that it means there's another dimension to getting good at the game: you can out-think your opponent or out-speed your opponent. I guess one thing you could compare Melee's mechanics to is learning combos in 2D fighters. Super's one-frame links are pretty damn hard, and not being able to punish because of mechanics is a potential fault with those games as well. Either way, at higher levels of gameplay, reading is still far more important than mechanics in Melee. It's at the mid level where this criticism becomes the biggest problem.

Next: "The game is highly imbalanced. To have a shot at being competitive, you're highly restricted in character selection." Most 2D fighters are balanced significantly better than Melee. Looking at the latest eventhubs tier list for Super, the worst matchup is 3-7. The vast majority of matchups are 5-5 or 6-4. Compare this to Melee's multitude of 8-2 matchups or even the 10-0 matchup people sometimes claim Fox/Kirby to be. However, look at say, BlazBlue, one of the more popular 2D fighters. Its cast has about 10 tournament-viable characters, and Melee has about 8-9. Within those 8 or 9, matchups are still hotly debated to the point where we might be able to consider them not too much less balanced than those between BlazBlue's top 10. Yes, you're restricted to a small amount of characters, but this isn't unprecedented in fighting games.

"Punishment is poorly-implemented and allows the game to swing between advantage and disadvantage far too quickly." A quick example: in Super, Ken is being pressured by Rufus. Ken DPs out. That's all the punishment he gets. Some damage and reset to neutral, unless he expends meter. There is no meter in Melee, no resource to keep track of. Contrast this to Falco being pressured by...anyone. He JC shines out and suddenly gets 60% or a stock because his anti-pressure option is also his best hitconfirm. 2D fighters try to implement punishment in such a way that while you're pressuring, the amount you can be punished is limited. Fast moves to interrupt pressure have bad proration and lead to lower-damage combos, DPs have invulnerability but don't lead to much, etc. This means your advantage is still quite high while pressuring. In Melee, the concept of advantage is much more nebulous, both for the anti-pressure reason and because our equivalent of the corner is also dangerous when you're pressuring but get thrown off and edgeguarded. I consider this a preference thing. If you want a more well-defined advantage/disadvantage dynamic, go for it. If you want doing pressure to be similar in risk to being pressured like in Melee, why not? There's also the issue of DI where even this extra-strong punishment isn't guaranteed, but as mentioned earlier that's also your preference.

Those are all the major criticisms I can think of at the moment. Anyway...

The Bottom Line (aka TL;DR)
Yes, Melee is a good competitive game. I wholeheartedly believe that. I won't say anything about Brawl since I'm not familiar with it. Yes, people on SRK mostly don't see Melee as a competitive game and view SmashBoards as a bunch of childish idiots. But at the same time, SmashBoards in general doesn't seem to respect SRK as a good community playing good competitive games. If we want both Melee and SmashBoards to grow, however, we should reach out to communities stronger than ours and learn from them, get acquainted with them, and most importantly establish a respectful relationship with them. I'm going to be blunt in my opinion: anyone who doesn't believe in the validity of both Melee and 2D fighters as competitive games based on the same overarching principle of reads and punishment is wrong. Above I have tried to outline the reasons why both styles of game implement this principle appropriately. But keep in mind the games are different, very different. You don't have to enjoy both to believe in their validity. I don't enjoy playing Super because I favor the additional reading opportunity given by the mobility in Melee. Similarly, I wouldn't expect most Super players to enjoy playing Melee since they favor the better-defined reading dynamic in their game. Either way, SRK is a good, strong community and it's worth it for us to learn from them. But to do that we need to fix perceptions on both sites, and I think it's correct that SmashBoards tries first.

 

[Dimitris]

It's sort of useless to discuss the whole pokemon song thing this much. Be real, the discussion is not going to influence peoples behaviour at a tourney.

 

[tarheeljks]

even if people don't choose to align their actions with the goals of the community, they should recognize any incongruences b/t their actions and said goals. it's not just about the song. forest, trees, etc


also, agree w/the above poster that behavior towards other communities should be more conciliatory. that's true on both ends of course but the onus is on us (lol puns)

 

[Divinokage]

So if I get the sudden urge to destroy someone, it's ok, right? Just because I feel like it. I don't care what consequences comes with it after. lolll.

 

[Cactuar]

I don't get why people bring up L-cancelling being this unnecessary thing just because it would obviously always be best to L-cancel in every situation. You can influence and disrupt your opponent's ability to L-cancel. It forces us to be aware of when we will or will not actually land an attack on an opponent, as well as how that attack will land.

 

[Nintendude]

edit actually I'm just gonna make a new thread, since this is a little different from the stuff being discussed in this thread

 

[Beat!]

I don't get why people bring up L-cancelling being this unnecessary thing just because it would obviously always be best to L-cancel in every situation. You can influence and disrupt your opponent's ability to L-cancel. It forces us to be aware of when we will or will not actually land an attack on an opponent, as well as how that attack will land.

This.

Learning L-cancelling a few years ago was extremely satisfying, and what's even more satisfying is screwing up your opponents L-cancels with lightshielding and shiz.

 

[AlcyoNite]

****ing up falco's l-cancel timing is part of ganon's shield game

 

[Bones0]

Also, I like this post, but I feel like it's a bit in depth for a "just learning" video. Are we talking about multiple videos, and they get more and more in depth as we go on?
Telling a brand new player all of this stuff is just going to get confusing.

Yeah, the stuff I listed is way too much to be in a single video. I just think it'd be awesome to have a video series dedicated to brief explanations of different aspects of the game. New players who are still ironing out their tech skill can learn to apply it effectively by watching the videos. Just think of how much more quickly you would have improved when you first started out if there was a 10 minute video explaining how to edge guard (grabbing the ledge for invincibility; ledge hopping attacks to cover a greater area around the ledge; covering multiple options like anticipating the Fox/Falco's side bs and reacting when you see them up-b; dealing with people ledge teching; etc.). There's so much that people can learn once they've isolated each aspect of the game. If you don't differentiate between edge guarding for kills and stage comboing for damage, players won't be making the right decisions.

 

[Cobalt]

I don't get why people bring up L-cancelling being this unnecessary thing just because it would obviously always be best to L-cancel in every situation. You can influence and disrupt your opponent's ability to L-cancel. It forces us to be aware of when we will or will not actually land an attack on an opponent, as well as how that attack will land.

It's because there's absolutely no decision-making involved in L-canceling. It's entirely mechanical--the timing you need to L-cancel can be changed by your opponent, but you still need to react to the situation and L-cancel every time, which is largely based on prior game knowledge rather than the ability to out-think your opponent. Arbitrary mechanical and background knowledge barriers don't add any depth to a purely-thinking game. Of course Smash isn't a purely thinking game, so it does add minor depth, but at a cost that makes the entire mechanic a poor idea.