For smash 4 to succeed, we need to change

[Overswarm]

@Overswarm

I don't know how you could have this mindset. A great community loves a game to death, then when a sequel is announced its numerous issues are pointed out and criticized. Brawl comes out, and there's a massive backlash due to a huge amount of people disliking various "features" such as the lack of gravity, lack of hitstun, lack of speed, etc. The community split, and eventually the competitive Brawl scene died down to a degree while the Melee scene made a revival. I know I donated $20 to the EVO fund myself.

I donated money to EVO too! :D

The thing is though, the melee community isn't that great. It was and could have been, but Melee players literally booed Brawl events. It's one thing to hog TVs or to complain a bit because Brawl is "taking up your stations", but to actively boo tournament games being played? Nah, not cool.

What's more, there really aren't that many issues with Brawl. People still LIKE Brawl. I have issues with Melee too. It's character roster is ridiculously small in a competitive scene, the amount of stages used is laughable, L-canceling is a chore and horrible design, etc., etc. Doesn't matter. I can still have fun with Melee. Lack of gravity, hit stun, speed, whatever, those aren't issues. Those are preferences. An "issue" is tripping. A "preference" is gravity.

I'm sure you can see why there was such a backlash even if you enjoy the slower Brawl gameplay. Was all the **** Brawl players went through from from a certain part of the Melee community necessary or justified at all? No. But I know you can see why it happened, and I know you can understand the sentiment even if you don't agree or sympathize with it at all.

"Why it happened" is because the Melee community is full of jerks.

Bottom line, a game that could satisfy both parties would be great and it's a damn shame that you're harboring such resentment against some overly-aggressive ******* who instead of ignoring a Brawl thread decided to flame it five years ago.

Not five years ago. Five years constantly. And it wasn't just one random guy, it's what makes you part of the Melee community. If you don't bash Brawl you're generally ostracized openly on the forums.

Melee kids suck. I actually enjoy the game but can't bring myself to play it because the community is so toxic.

 

[Crispy4001]

Clearly I don't think the game is above criticism (nor Melee for that matter). Of course tripping is ridiculous with respect to competition. The point I keep trying to put forth is that the solution that should satisfy everyone would be to have any discussions related to "Melee vs Brawl" / "Brawl is inferior" in a dedicated thread and not pollute the fun experience that others are having.

I simply can't understand what justification there is for opposing this suggestion.

How would you expect to have discussion on L-Canceling in (or not in) SSB4 without invoking its implementation in Melee? How would you expect to have Brawl players not react to that? How would you expect that discussion not to move in some fashion to a comparison between the two?

This is why there shouldn't be a hard line in the sand. It only stifles discussion and reasoned debate, not to mention leads to people crying wolf when there was no malice intended. If things stray way too far from the original topic's framework, ok, mods should act. If people are entering just to troll and not engage in discussion, ok, mods should act.

Otherwise, there's no reason to issue a gag order and point people to a dedicated ****** pig pen of a thread that should be locked to begin with.

 

[Overswarm]

-We allow every stage except the truly broken ones (demonstrably broken stages like Temple or the really and truly random stages like WarioWare Inc.). There may be a few borderline stages that are "bad in several ways" that we could get rid of with the broad assent of the community, but the general direction would be toward permissiveness.
-Game one is played on a legal stage selected at random. Each player has two random strikes they can use, and the situation of which player uses a strike is handled by deducing a strike from whoever pauses to do the reset first. Once a stage is strick, it is guaranteed not to be used again for the first game (so you don't have to strike the same stage twice if it comes up again). Assuming at least mild rationality from both players, game one is most likely played on a stage that's somewhere within the more fair half of legal stages since two strikes is quite a bit to work with.
-We remove the idea of stage bans for counterpicks. Instead, counterpicking is done like this. First, loser picks three legal stages that have not been used yet in the set. Then winner picks character. Then loser picks character. Then winner picks the stage out of the three stages the loser picked in the first place. This still works as a counterpick for the loser, but it gives the winner several tools to avoid hard counters. It will make the result of losing a game be "get a stage that's kinda good for you" instead of "get your best stage unless your opponent knows you very well to use their ban intelligently in which case get your second best stage".

I lose first round.

"I pick FD, Smashville, Pokemon Stadium"


That right there is one of the bigger problems with your theoretical CP system. People tend to want to get rid of unique stages that pose individual problems and want to keep stages that are similar to others, which causes overlap problems. You can ban Jungle Japes and no stage like it is there to replace it, but if you ban FD it has several backups ready.


I've often considered the merits of having as many legal stages as possible and every player being given a "tournament card" that lists 5 stages (or however many). These 5 stages would be their possible counterpicks for the entire tournament.

Proceed as normal (loser picks stage, winner character, loser character).

This would completely eliminate any possibility of giving your opponent a "bad stage" outside of sheer luck, and your opponent's single ban could then be used more accurately. I hated FD being legal because if someone had a pocket ICs it had to be banned but if you didn't know, what then? This rewarded multiple character play which I liked personally, but it didn't help much with stage list issues.

Having 5 stages (or however many) legal per player (with potential overlap!) would also automatically prevent any potential inundation of multiple stages. There'd be no stage striking through 25 stages (for a total stage strike strategy), no bickering about how many bans we'd get based off how many stages, etc., etc.... It'd be pretty clean cut.

Brawl example:

I play MK.

My stages:
Rainbow Cruise
Distant Planet
Smashville
Frigate Orpheon
Pictochat

You play Dedede

You win, you look at my stages, you realize Rainbow Cruise and Distant Planet both could cause you some trouble, but you'd prefer to not deal with MK having a lead on Distant Planet. You ban Distant Planet. MK takes you to Rainbow Cruise.

It'd be a bit cleaner, I think.

 

[Vkrm]

I'm not bitter at all, sakurai can make what ever kind of game he pleases, but there's only one type of smash game that ill pay for. 10 years from now smash 4 will be one of the games we managed to out live assuming thing haven't improved over barlw. It sucks that you took the all BvM stuff so hard, but all things considered the melee comunity is pretty amazing. We accept people, scrubby or not. We just don't like bad games. Directed at over swarm by the way.

 

[Crispy4001]

I even have the secondary request that, if you truly have such a bitter taste in your mouth about it (something you honestly can't know now given that we know almost nothing about it; I'm terrified of people already ready to attack it even though their knowledge is so slim), just leave it alone. That wouldn't be as good as being a positive force in the overall community, but it's acceptable to hold yourself as neutral and disengaged in all matters smash 4 and for my part I wouldn't be upset with anyone who chose to do that.

But you would take issue with someone who speaks out in disapproval of where Nintendo takes it?

I'm with you on people jumping the gun, but regardless, the more we know about the game the more people's opinions will become polarized. That doesn't imply we all don't love Smash or this community - quite the opposite. Again, I think that this diversity of opinion (and the freedom to stand by it) is a positive force. The passion behind it has driven a host of fan projects and mods. And I'm a firm believer that two Smash games with thriving scenes is better than one, both in bringing people back and bringing in newcomers.

What's holding back this franchise competitively isn't the Melee vs Brawl debate. It's the narrative most of the rest of the internet spun about competitive Smash long before Brawl came out.


If you truly want a much more vibrant Smash community, the biggest step to be taken isn't changing the discourse here. It's building bridges with SRK. Second to that is something that falls out of our hands... Nintendo has to make a game that both is less polarizing and more competitively tailored than their last effort.

 

[Browny]

Dear god no

Look at Melee/Brawls sales compared to SF, MvC and Tekken. ITS LIKE DOUBLE OF THEM ALL COMBINED.

Those ******s over on SRK are a lost cause, they will never convert to smash coz their heads are so far up their ass they dont even know nintendo were at E3. They hold no power over anything.

Smash's best way to success is getting the MASSES of players who dont go to tournaments, to go to them. And that doesnt start by introducing them to SRK, thats the quickest way imaginable to discourage new players. No, we need to do our own thing and encourage them to join the competitive community by showing we are not all a bunch of elitist jerks, not extorting them for money every tournament, and making them WANT to come to tournaments.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

I dunno OS, I always felt like I had quite a bit of flexibility in stage similarity. Like I could list Norfair, Rainbow Cruise, Brinstar, and I felt pretty good that I was going to get a stage that supported a very aerial style of play. Sometimes I'd have multiple stages that I'd find very good for me for very different reasons, and that would be even better as it would give my opponent room to work within my playstyle. Like I would most likely, against most opponents, list "Norfair, Green Greens, [whichever of Rainbow Cruise, Brinstar, or Halberd I thought their character game 1 was worst on]". I'd love all three stages and be happy playing on any of them, but my opponent would be able to maneuver to avoid me picking the single hardest counter I could make out of that. For something like Japes, I would usually like it for small platforms, and I felt like Green Greens and Brinstar could be used in a lot of the same ways. If I wanted it to be really horizontal, Smashville and Final Destination were options. If I wanted to be able to attack through the stage, I had Delfino and Halberd. No stage is truly like Japes, but I don't think it (or any other stage) is so unique that you can't encapsulate one aspect of the gameplay that you're looking to emphasize and find it on a few other stages, and that's the kind of thinking I always used with counterpicks (imagining one way I was going to try to play and picking a stage that would cooperate with me in that). It's true that a lot of players would list something like what you listed, but that's only really scary against someone like ICs in which case something like Pokemon Stadium or Battlefield is still a way better outcome than Final Destination of Smashville and honestly Pokemon Stadium is decently different from those two in the first place. Those players will always use their own counterpicks to pick something boring as well, and I don't think any fair system could stop them from that if we even would want to.

Your system isn't bad either (it's actually fairly similar to mine with a slight lean against character counterpicking but for stage counterpicking, by my calculation of it), but I'm curious how you propose to handle game one. IMO that's the hardest game to get right; there are a lot of ways to clean up counterpicking, but game one has to be something that works for both players which is the hard part.

 

[LiteralGrill]

You mentioned PSASBR LSS Rules

I'm glad to see people might be willing to try something new, I'd love to put whatever experience I had with experimental PSASBR rulesets to help the cause, I tried lots of odd things and had other cool ideas to try, maybe we could "beta test" them in brawl or melee to see how well they run. As I do admit, even with the list of 13 LSS can be time consuming, and we aren't using all the stages either, so who knows about trying ALL of the smash stages.. I like the random first legal stage idea though, it's not a bad start but it may leave someone hard countered in the first match, what do you do about that?

Also, from what I saw of stages, a lot of them shown in various trailers seems to have walk offs instead of you beings able to be smashed down, it may make it much harder to find legal stages as so many of those were banned in brawl for some decent reasons most times. So we may have to adapt and form a decent new ruleset to make the game work well for us.

Edit: And yea, match one is ALWAYS the most difficult to decide as it has to be fair. LSS does this perfectly as possible I think, while allowing both sides to have counterpicks that can work in each others favor, though I again admit, picking the stages to strike down and the time it takes is a major issue.

 

[Crispy4001]

Dear god no

Look at Melee/Brawls sales compared to SF, MvC and Tekken. ITS LIKE DOUBLE OF THEM ALL COMBINED.

Those ******s over on SRK are a lost cause, they will never convert to smash coz their heads are so far up their *** they dont even know nintendo were at E3. They hold no power over anything.

Smash's best way to success is getting the MASSES of players who dont go to tournaments, to go to them. And that doesnt start by introducing them to SRK, thats the quickest way imaginable to discourage new players. No, we need to do our own thing and encourage them to join the competitive community by showing we are not all a bunch of elitist jerks, not extorting them for money every tournament, and making them WANT to come to tournaments.

As much as **** as you talk, SRK has tight reins on the groupthink over fighting game talk in general on the internet. Don't believe me? Post a thread about competitive Smash on any other major gaming forum on the internet, see what kind of response you get. Smash-specific talk zones don't count.

Yes, going to the masses is important on a personal basis. But this community will always face an insurmountable roadblock without acceptance in the broader internet, gaming public.

 

[LiteralGrill]

As much as **** as you talk, SRK has tight reins on the groupthink over fighting game talk in general on the internet. Don't believe me? Post a thread about competitive Smash on any other major gaming forum on the internet, see what kind of response you get. Smash-specific talk zones don't count.

Yes, going to the masses is important on a personal basis. But this community will always face an insurmountable roadblock without acceptance in the broader internet, gaming public.

I'd agree with this, the broader public of the gaming world views the smash community as different, and in some ways it is.

From my PSASBR experience, we got a lot more SRK types in tournaments, heck, the game has a now dead forum on there. And the community for PSASBR turned out to be rather nasty, tons of people you'd never want to talk to, horribly elitist at times as well. I would have begged for a community like smash games have, because minus a few awesome people the PSAS community SUCKS. And a lot of em openly like and accept trolls too, some trolls being heroes of the community somehow.

So, while yes it's not easy to be accepted by the community at large, but the real question might be do you WANT those people here?

 

[Crispy4001]

I'd agree with this, the broader public of the gaming world views the smash community as different, and in some ways it is.

From my PSASBR experience, we got a lot more SRK types in tournaments, heck, the game has a now dead forum on there. And the community for PSASBR turned out to be rather nasty, tons of people you'd never want to talk to, horribly elitist at times as well. I would have begged for a community like smash games have, because minus a few awesome people the PSAS community SUCKS. And a lot of em openly like and accept trolls too, some trolls being heroes of the community somehow.

So, while yes it's not easy to be accepted by the community at large, but the real question might be do you WANT those people here?

If they want to learn Smash and have something to contribute, why not?

I can't speak for your experience of course, but branding and stereotyping are exactly the poisons that keep the Smash community as isolated as it is, especially online. So even if I take you at your word, rallying against them based on portrayals like yours is precisely what we shouldn't be doing.

 

[SmashDivine]

How would you expect to have discussion on L-Canceling in (or not in) SSB4 without invoking its implementation in Melee? How would you expect to have Brawl players not react to that? How would you expect that discussion not to move in some fashion to a comparison between the two?

This is why there shouldn't be a hard line in the sand. It only stifles discussion and reasoned debate, not to mention leads to people crying wolf when there was no malice intended. If things stray way too far from the original topic's framework, ok, mods should act. If people are entering just to troll and not engage in discussion, ok, mods should act.

Otherwise, there's no reason to issue a gag order and point people to a dedicated ****** pig pen of a thread that should be locked to begin with.

Well, you pretty much hit the nail on the head. That is exactly what mods are for. You use strong language like "gag order", but of course such things are ubiquitous and certainly not against the spirit of the site: in some cases it is even automatic, which is why you can't be sure what the **** I just wrote

But no, what I've proposed is nothing so prohibitive. And who said anything about lines in the sand? Think of it as a plea for self censorship. I wouldn't exactly categorize those who initiate these tribalesque online skirmishes by stamping their feet and declaring that Melee is superior to Brawl as trolls, or at the very least I don't think they are intending to be/think of themselves as such. If I thought that I'd ignore them and advise others to do the same.

I think that for the most part they are people with a superiority complex who don't realize that they are acting ungentlemanly, and therefore a common sense plea should not be futile in principle. Everyone draws their own "line in the sand", is notified by others when the line has been crossed, and is dealt with more handily by moderators if that notice is impotent in its effect.We don't need the Hammurabi code and Judge Dredd here (unless he is a hidden character in SB4). We need the golden rule and Crocodile Dundee.

 

[Browny]

As much as **** as you talk, SRK has tight reins on the groupthink over fighting game talk in general on the internet. Don't believe me? Post a thread about competitive Smash on any other major gaming forum on the internet, see what kind of response you get. Smash-specific talk zones don't count.

Yes, going to the masses is important on a personal basis. But this community will always face an insurmountable roadblock without acceptance in the broader internet, gaming public.

I would be THOROUGHLY surprised if there was a single person in the history of smash, who was considering going competitive, but backed out because of some **** talking ******* bashing smash as not being competitive on random internet forums. If they did back out, they werent worth it to begin with, they never would have amounted to anything, they clearly never cared much about it. Why would we want to waste our time trying to appease a bunch of elitists who made up their biased mind in 2001. And as AylasHero said, even if we were accepted by them, it wouldn't help build the scene when theres even more elitist jerks to scare off the newcomers.

I really think youre pandering to the wrong crowd here. Its like trying to tell Battlefield players to come over to competitive CoD, because it has more competitive merit than they know. Do you think they give the slightest ****?

 

[LiteralGrill]

If they want to learn Smash and have something to contribute, why not?

I can't speak for your experience of course, but branding and stereotyping are exactly the poisons that keep the Smash community as isolated as it is, especially online. So even if I take you at your word, rallying against them based on portrayals like yours is precisely what we shouldn't be doing.

I would agree with you there as well.
\My biggest suggestion would be to make sure moderators and TOs are ready for these new people and changing dynamics and they'll cause so they can adjust. It'll make things a lot different here if bunches of people who play fighters differently come here.

Especially moderators on that one, my site seems to be the only one for PSAS that gives any care in the world about the rules, and people abuse the forums on other sites sadly.

 

[Crispy4001]

I would be THOROUGHLY surprised if there was a single person in the history of smash, who was considering going competitive, but backed out because of some **** talking ******* bashing smash as not being competitive on random internet forums. If they did back out, they werent worth it to begin with, they never would have amounted to anything, they clearly never cared much about it. Why would we want to waste our time trying to appease a bunch of elitists who made up their biased mind in 2001. And as AylasHero said, even if we were accepted by them, it wouldn't help build the scene when theres even more elitist jerks to scare off the newcomers.

Not play Smash? Doubtful. Laugh off the idea of competitive smash because it is foreign to them and the people who apparently know what's what about fighting games think it's ********? Absolutely.

In fairness, there's still the issue of most people tending to play with items on (if they play at all anymore). But I do believe that the negativity surrounding competitive Smash in the FGC has left them less open to the idea of the game being worth more than ****s and giggles. It's definitely polarized opinions, and encouraged people to pick a side. The greatest debate among Smash fans isn't Brawl vs Melee ... it's competitive play vs casual enjoyment. The sad thing is that a large portion of the Smash audience has convinced themselves that the two don't mix well together. And that fun in competition only refers to the fighting games SRK approves of.

I think many more people could have become fans of competitive Smash without this stigmata. Saying that they don't amount for anything sounds just like the elitism you're trying to call SRK out on. What we need to do here is break the cycle, not burn bridges and be content with living in our own bubble.

On that note, I refuse to believe that this community raised $95k for a self-congratulatory circlejerk. We wanted to bring the hype to the world. Even beyond EVO, we should strive to be ambassadors of awesome, not a cult of narcissists.

 

[Nitros14]

Man I don't what you guys are talking about going melee to brawl.

I played only Bowser in both and things got faster and more fluid going to Brawl.

"Combos"? What the hell are those? Is that when I may as well put my controller down for 15 seconds while my character gets unstoppably KO'd?

 

[Browny]

Not play Smash? Doubtful. Laugh off the idea of competitive smash because it is foreign to them and the people who apparently know what's what about fighting games think it's ********? Absolutely.

Allow me to re-state what I said.

If anyone was looking for a competitive game to get serious into, who were not into smash to begin with, and base their decision solely on the opinion of PEOPLE WHO DONT EVEN PLAY THE GAME, then they were lost before they even started. They never would have gone pro, they would have quit immediately and added nothing to their respective scene. You need a significant amount more dedication than that if you want to be competitive in any game and if you get discouraged based on what keyboard warriors have to say about it, then you were never going to make it.

It applies to any game, youre either going to be competitive at it, or youre not. Ultimately what other people say about the game is irrelevant, they arent forcing you to not go to tournaments or play their game.

I mean really... do we honestly NEED people in our scene who will only play the game if SRK tells them its a good game? I dont know about you, but I'd rather have dedicated fans who will put in the time and effort because they love the series and will play it regardless of anything.

 

[Overswarm]

I dunno OS, I always felt like I had quite a bit of flexibility in stage similarity. Like I could list Norfair, Rainbow Cruise, Brinstar, and I felt pretty good that I was going to get a stage that supported a very aerial style of play. Sometimes I'd have multiple stages that I'd find very good for me for very different reasons, and that would be even better as it would give my opponent room to work within my playstyle. Like I would most likely, against most opponents, list "Norfair, Green Greens, [whichever of Rainbow Cruise, Brinstar, or Halberd I thought their character game 1 was worst on]". I'd love all three stages and be happy playing on any of them, but my opponent would be able to maneuver to avoid me picking the single hardest counter I could make out of that. For something like Japes, I would usually like it for small platforms, and I felt like Green Greens and Brinstar could be used in a lot of the same ways. If I wanted it to be really horizontal, Smashville and Final Destination were options. If I wanted to be able to attack through the stage, I had Delfino and Halberd. No stage is truly like Japes, but I don't think it (or any other stage) is so unique that you can't encapsulate one aspect of the gameplay that you're looking to emphasize and find it on a few other stages, and that's the kind of thinking I always used with counterpicks (imagining one way I was going to try to play and picking a stage that would cooperate with me in that). It's true that a lot of players would list something like what you listed, but that's only really scary against someone like ICs in which case something like Pokemon Stadium or Battlefield is still a way better outcome than Final Destination of Smashville and honestly Pokemon Stadium is decently different from those two in the first place. Those players will always use their own counterpicks to pick something boring as well, and I don't think any fair system could stop them from that if we even would want to.

Your system isn't bad either (it's actually fairly similar to mine with a slight lean against character counterpicking but for stage counterpicking, by my calculation of it), but I'm curious how you propose to handle game one. IMO that's the hardest game to get right; there are a lot of ways to clean up counterpicking, but game one has to be something that works for both players which is the hard part.

With an optimal stage list overlap isn't often a problem because there's either A) no overlap or B) lots of overlap, both have their merits. The trend in every smash game has been to reduce the stage lists to the most "bare bones" type stages regardless of their similarity with one another; I'll bet bottom dollar that if the new smash has FD, a smaller FD, and a larger FD, all 3 will remain legal for years to come. I'm coming from a less "Texas and Midwest" sense, where we have actual stage lists, and more from a "I'm from the East Coast and what is this" mentality of 5 starter stages and 2 CPs being enough.

The stage striking system is still the best system so far for the first stage. Characters chosen first, stage strike from a preset list. What the actual list is is very important and makes or breaks the system, an admittable weakness.

Admittable isn't a word on Smashboards? What? It underlined in red. Weird.

I'm personally going to play on all random stages for a long while after Smash 4 is released to get a feel of all the stages (including those that one would consider auto-ban), but I know most are going to immediately start removing stages, so I try to solve that problem.


Really the optimal solution is to remove the option for players to choose in the first place. Have every tournament have a set starter stage that changes each tournament, or a different starter for each tournament round, etc., and let people practice in advance is one solution. Having "iron man" setups where each player picks 3 characters and assigns a stage to each character is another solution for CPing, so that each player picks solely on their character's merits rather than "what hurts their opponent". Gets rid of the stuff most people hate.

I would hate to see hard CPs disappear though, but they always do.

On that note, I refuse to believe that this community raised $95k for a self-congratulatory circlejerk. We wanted to bring the hype to the world. Even beyond EVO, we should strive to be ambassadors of awesome, not a cult of narcissists.

What? People just wanted to play Melee and for some reason associate EVO with acceptance. I don't know why, the reason EVO is so big is because it is their event. Singular. It's a hodge podge of old fighters with small communities and whatever fighter most recently came out because they cycle through games as quickly as they come out. It's where old games go to die and new games come to be advertised.

 

[Crispy4001]

If anyone was looking for a competitive game to get serious into, who were not into smash to begin with, and base their decision solely on the opinion of PEOPLE WHO DONT EVEN PLAY THE GAME, then they were lost before they even started.

The logic here is simple. SRK thinking it's best played as a 'party game' is the very reason they don't play the game competitively. Should we blame people for trusting them over us? Absolutely not. It's tit for tat, at best. We're a community insularly focused on one franchise. They're a community coming from a broader perspective of dozens of fighting IPs. If I wasn't already convinced that Smash could be great in a competitive context, my gut instinct would trust them over this board too. Right now we hoping that people have the curiosity to question that after all the intense online negativity working against us. You can't possibly consider this an ideal scenario for our scene to grow.

This isn't about "going pro." It's about expanding the audience of competitive Smash fans and participants. What does or doesn't change at the very top level of play isn't the point here whatsoever.

Also, 'being compeditive' at a game shouldn't be thought of as something black or white. In drawing new players into the scene, we have to consider it a mindset.

I mean really... do we honestly NEED people in our scene who will only play the game if SRK tells them its a good game? I dont know about you, but I'd rather have dedicated fans who will put in the time and effort because they love the series and will play it regardless of anything.

Basically, this implies we should be limiting ourselves to Nintendo fanboys. I think this outlook only serves to discredits the game(s) we love and reinforce the stereotype that we're only into this because we're just that obsessed with Mario and Pikachu.

Asking if we really NEED a larger community is a defeatist attitude which only hampers us. If SRK were to come around, would you reject these players? Of course not. So let's not be so lame about it.

What? People just wanted to play Melee and for some reason associate EVO with acceptance.

Anyone hoping for acceptance must have forgotten that Melee was already at EVO once before. I think the larger point was to give the game a platform on that stage again.

 

[Vkrm]

I just wanted 50000 plus stream viewers to see how awesome melee is. This isn't melee's death rattle. I think we are all hoping to get the boost that KOF got in 2012.

 

[VelenZiga]

Not play Smash? Doubtful. Laugh off the idea of competitive smash because it is foreign to them and the people who apparently know what's what about fighting games think it's ********? Absolutely.

In fairness, there's still the issue of most people tending to play with items on (if they play at all anymore). But I do believe that the negativity surrounding competitive Smash in the FGC has left them less open to the idea of the game being worth more than ****s and giggles. It's definitely polarized opinions, and encouraged people to pick a side. The greatest debate among Smash fans isn't Brawl vs Melee ... it's competitive play vs casual enjoyment. The sad thing is that a large portion of the Smash audience has convinced themselves that the two don't mix well together. And that fun in competition only refers to the fighting games SRK approves of.

Unfortunately for myself. I had the displeasure of knowing someone who best signifies why a lot of people think the two don't mix. This person was a tournament player in multiple games on multiple platforms. You try to say anything that doesn't sound competitively viable and they would stake a proverbial rod in your *** ,snap it off, then browbeat you with it, if it weren't for the fact they played competitive, they might've been more amiable (though the fact they used tournaments for their sole source of INCOME didn't help matters). The way they were however, they were nigh unapproachable, and had an attitude that was toxic as could be.

Smogon and Serebii.net's forums are crawling with people with similarly toxic attitudes. Whether a majority or minority, they are there, and they get vocal if you say anything about the metagame that's thinking outside the box that their Strategy Pokedex stuff polarizes most people into. You'll be laughed at, called names, and overall ostracized if you don't conform. The fact that the current engine they use for online play actively bans Pokemon in higher tiers from the lower ones. Thereby actually enforcing tiers that are supposed to be based on usage alone, doesn't help matters.

 

[KishPrime]

What? People just wanted to play Melee and for some reason associate EVO with acceptance. I don't know why, the reason EVO is so big is because it is their event. Singular. It's a hodge podge of old fighters with small communities and whatever fighter most recently came out because they cycle through games as quickly as they come out. It's where old games go to die and new games come to be advertised.

This is the weirdest description of Evo that I've ever seen, and unfairly critical of both the event and the fighting game community. I think your flair for the dramatic got the better of you, OS.

 

[Overswarm]

Having been through fighting, RTS, strategy, shooter, and puzzle competitive communities the fighting one is the only one I've seen that attempts to maintain the validity of their old games through one large event. If the game is a part of EVO, it's either being advertised or is an old game that no one really plays anymore.... but a small competitive community hangs onto it. I'd suspect, but don't know for sure at all, that overlap in players might account for a lot of this (since it is generally easy to transfer from many of the games to another as they use similar skillsets, similar to switching between Melee/Brawl).

Look at this:

http://forums.shoryuken.com/categories/tournaments-events

The games are all over the place. Most of them have no replies, let alone views. The communities are held up by a few medium sized events that all are designed around EVO, their big event.

The crazy thing is that fighting games aren't that different from shooters or RTSes or anything like that. Everyone moves on to the next game in the series. If it's bad, they switch series. It's not uncommon. No one plays Halo 2 anymore and Halo 2 dwarfed anything a street fighter game will ever accomplish in terms of players.

Despite what some may want, when Smash 4 comes out it will be the largest competitive fighter on the scene. Within four months the smash community will have more Smash 4 tournaments than any other fighting game will have in a year. Starcraft 2 beats it, CS:GO beats it, LoL beats it, CoD beats it, DOTA 2 beats it.

The games that come to EVO are always either A) brand new and there solely for advertisement (see: Injustice) or B) a small niche game that is dying or plateauing. When Street Fighter 4 came out it was one of the biggest revivals in that style of fighter in a long time, and Street Fighter 4 never really even got that big.

It's kind of funny, really. If you combined all the 2D fighters into one community you'd have a community as big or bigger than smash (can't tell how much overlap there is), if not rivaling some of the more popular competitive games. But they hold onto games because they enjoy them, but for some reason still try to validate it as an individual community.

No one cares about Street Fight X Tekken. No one cares about Tekken Tag Tournament 2. No one cares about Street Fighter 2 Turbo. But yet they exist and take up floor space at events like Northwest Majors Live. These games will never grow in popularity. A few dozen might pick it up for a year or two, someone good at one game might look at it as free money, one city might get into it, etc., but the game itself will never become anything more than it already is competitively. Just a slow, slow death that drags down games like it.

EVO in a nutshell.

 

[AceZTeller]

See, it's people like this that give me a little more reason to be a part of the competitive smash community. But what the OP states is true: for an outsider like me, it seems that the biggest problem with this community is that there is no middle ground ANYWHERE. I just silently lurk the forums here and watch as this community kills itself from the inside. You need more people like the ones here if you want to be successful. Hell, I'm a Skullgirls player, and I held a HUGE grudge on you guys for the longest time. However, I'm glad that I could get it sorted out and worry about more important things, like how top-tier Wii Fit Trainer is going to be. I want to see you guys succeed, but I'm afraid we are all a part of the minority.

That being said, Hi! I'm Ace and I really want to be a competitive smash player! I played Link in SSB, Shiek/Y.Link in Melee, and MGAW/Link/Lucario in Brawl. I'm a part of the FGC and I play a lot of arcade fighters competitively, Including Skullgirls, UMVC3, GGAC+, and Injustice. Hope to see you guys on Wii U soon!

 

[KrIsP!]

SMH at this thread. Especially at OP. The argument was started over the gameplay, it wasn't a small but vocal minority. It was the melee community and they ended making RoM so they could enjoy they're game instead of picking up one they dind't like. Plain and simple.

For Smash 4 to succeed it needs to be good, first and foremost. And to whoever said we have to overwhlem the FGC with our massive numbers... wtf are you talking about? Melee is in evo, it has 400+ entrants. Marvel and Street Fighter will have well over 1500 entrants. And they don't hate us, some of them troll...stop being a baby and put up with it. they troll themselves, the general argument is that marvel is easy-mode, aridashers are easy mode, 3d fighters take no skill...they all yell at each other so who cares if they give us the same treatment? What's important is that they're also excited for Smash 4. The TO of CEO has already said he'd love to have Smash 4 next year if possible, he loves melee but hounding down for CRTs isn't an option. Not to mention we have our own tournaments.

I swear the only problem I have with brawl for me are people who say dumb **** like this. I doubt they're even really a part of their competitive community in terms of going to tournaments. The Brawl community is fine by me, I could care less if they enjoy their game and I respect people like Zero, salem, Keitaro, etc. It's the no-names that are reviving this debate and spouting misinformation. Just play whichever game you enjoy, if there's a game that can sway more of the melee community then it will be because it earned it...not because it's got a 2014 date on it.

 

[KishPrime]

The crazy thing is that fighting games aren't that different from shooters or RTSes or anything like that. Everyone moves on to the next game in the series. If it's bad, they switch series. It's not uncommon. No one plays Halo 2 anymore and Halo 2 dwarfed anything a street fighter game will ever accomplish in terms of players.

It's kind of funny, really. If you combined all the 2D fighters into one community you'd have a community as big or bigger than smash (can't tell how much overlap there is), if not rivaling some of the more popular competitive games. But they hold onto games because they enjoy them, but for some reason still try to validate it as an individual community.

I mean, it's a hobbyist community, right? And people who enjoy themselves at the events come out to play, right?

That's how I see it. You're making it waaaaaaaay more serious than it really is. It doesn't really matter how big it is or how important people feel. You going to accuse the 50-100 guys traveling to a Tecmo Super Bowl tournament in Wisconsin of "trying to maintain the validity of their own game?" I look at it as a giant party where people who like the same thing get together, and Evo lets people do that for a LOT of games that have passionate players. I think that's pretty darn cool.

Which, of course, is why I have no interest in a Smash game, competitively, unless it's better than what I already play.

 

[Overswarm]

It's not a hobbyist community though; that's the thing. If it was, it'd be different. It isn't. You may play it as a hobby similar to how I speed run Mega Man games as a hobby - at an above average level at best and with complete disregard for what may be considered "proper" or "good". This does not reflect the community as a whole.

I mean really, you look at the Melee kids repeatedly going out of their way to bash Brawl and say they're a "hobbyist" community? It's a competitive community. SRK's the same way, down to not knowing how small their fishbowl is.

 

[Revven]

SMH at this thread. Especially at OP. The argument was started over the gameplay, it wasn't a small but vocal minority. It was the melee community and they ended making RoM so they could enjoy they're game instead of picking up one they dind't like. Plain and simple.

For Smash 4 to succeed it needs to be good, first and foremost. And to whoever said we have to overwhlem the FGC with our massive numbers... wtf are you talking about? Melee is in evo, it has 400+ entrants. Marvel and Street Fighter will have well over 1500 entrants. And they don't hate us, some of them troll...stop being a baby and put up with it. they troll themselves, the general argument is that marvel is easy-mode, aridashers are easy mode, 3d fighters take no skill...they all yell at each other so who cares if they give us the same treatment? What's important is that they're also excited for Smash 4. The TO of CEO has already said he'd love to have Smash 4 next year if possible, he loves melee but hounding down for CRTs isn't an option. Not to mention we have our own tournaments.

I swear the only problem I have with brawl for me are people who say dumb **** like this. I doubt they're even really a part of their competitive community in terms of going to tournaments. The Brawl community is fine by me, I could care less if they enjoy their game and I respect people like Zero, salem, Keitaro, etc. It's the no-names that are reviving this debate and spouting misinformation. Just play whichever game you enjoy, if there's a game that can sway more of the melee community then it will be because it earned it...not because it's got a 2014 date on it.

 

[Ussi]

So we should probably get out of the way that the Wii U smash will be the competitive standard for nationals, right?

 

[Ogre_Deity_Link]

I...I just...

I've been gone from Smash Boards for quite a while, after I finally got my hands on Brawl, and I haven't looked back since. I decided to hop back onto the site because this was the best place to go for information involving the new games, potential rumors and so on. I've never got along fully with the competitive crowd, but we sort of had our understandings back in the day.

But now?

You people disgust me. The OP was simply trying to unify people in the sense of just being good, decent people and enjoying the game, whether it's Brawl OR Melee. No one is saying you're terrible people for liking Melee. We're saying your terrible people for insulting, belittling, degrading, or otherwise acting like complete ****heads to those who happen to enjoy Brawl. (And yes, I know not all Melee fans are like this.) AND YET, there are those of you who refuse to stop these things and cling onto your desire to be complete jackasses. Why? Hell if I know. Is it that important that you get to continue with your war? Is it that important that you HAVE to try and "Show Brawl players the error of their stupid ways?"

Can't we just have fun? Or has that been banned too?

 

[KrIsP!]

Reread what the OP said. He may have back tracked after no one stood with him but he basically asked what others have asked when brawl came out. Melee should step aside so we can have one big community. Centered around a game no ones played yet because we'll have an onslaught of newcomers. The general consensus around the melee players seems to be the same as it always has, hopefully it'll be good in a competitive sense, if not nothing changes for most of us.

I have nothing against the brawl community or mixed tournaments, but I can't enjoy the game. That's where the split began and if some people were immature and made unnecessary comments that's on them. That was a long time ago, even the OP admits hes been gone for awhile and came back to revive the debate when bith communites sre cool together for the most part. The OP wasn't trying to unify us. He seemed to be trying to make us grin and bear it.

 

[Ogre_Deity_Link]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHavingFunGuys

Do I need to say any more?

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

When I play Melee, I feel like I am operating a well-oiled machine. My only limit is my own ability to execute.

When I play Brawl, I feel like I am covered in glue. When I grab the ledge, I cannot instantly ledge-hop off of it into an attack. There is a mandatory delay. That and many other stupid mechanics are what soured the experience.

We absolutely should not skip straight to loving and adoring Smash 4 just because it is "new" or "HD" or whatever. I will like Smash 4 according to its merits as a competitive fighter.

It had plenty of merit as a competitive fighter; I'm sorry that you gave up on it so quickly that you couldn't see that. Did it have its problems? Absolutely, but brawl is a solid competitive game in 2013. What it is not is an amazing spectator sport, which are very different things.

 

[Groose]

I've always lived by a few simple rules:

-Play whatever game you like more. Don't hassle a person because they don't like the same game as you. If you really want to play said person, take turns on different games.
-If the oppontent uses an overpowered, cheap, or spam-oriented character, ask them politely to change. If they refuse...oh well. Play someone else or deal with it.
-If you're just having fun, play wherever. If all the chips are on the table, play anywhere that doesn't throw a bunch of cheap hazards your way. And if things are REALLY serious... Final Destination or Battlefield. No arguments.
-Above all, you play Smash to have fun. Taking a break or changing things up is all part of the appeal. Every now and again I like to have on onlyPokeballs and Assist Trophys at a high spawn rate... because I think it's a good change of pace.

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Feel free to re-read what I said. I didn't backtrack one bit; I clarified for some people (like you apparently) who didn't get what I said the first time. I do also appreciate the ad hominem on me; I'm not a "nobody" in the sense that I was quite active and involved in the Brawl community a few years back (and spoilers: I'm planning to go super active again for smash 4), but even if I were, such an attack really says more about you than me. If you really did read what I said, as you seem to claim, you would notice that I merely mentioned that and several other conflicts. I said what happened in pretty factual terms that I honestly don't see how anyone who was actually there could dispute and that the conflict caused problems so we shouldn't have a repeat. It was others who re-ignited arguments, though the response that mentioning the conflict got is really telling. All I ever said was that we all need to get along and support each other. I definitely stand by what I've said several times since. If you find that message offensive, rather than coming on here to throw another round of attacks, just look in the mirror. Is this really what you want to be? Are you the guy who is bothered by the idea of everyone getting along and working together? I sure hope not, both for your sake and for all of ours. I didn't really want to dwell on this; I said I was done posting about it. But seriously, posts like that just boggle the mind; do you seriously not see the problem with the things you're posting?

Even more, if you're so dead-set on being negative, why are you even here? We're all here because we're enthused for smash 4. If you aren't enthused and aren't anticipating your future involvement with the smash 4 scene, it makes no sense for you to come on here. My motivations are to learn about a game I'm excited about while trying to lay groundwork for the smash 4 community to do as well as it can. I know I'm just one guy so my reach is limited, but I'm trying to do my part to help. What are your motivations?

 

[TheBuzzSaw]

It had plenty of merit as a competitive fighter; I'm sorry that you gave up on it so quickly that you couldn't see that. Did it have its problems? Absolutely, but brawl is a solid competitive game in 2013. What it is not is an amazing spectator sport, which are very different things.

Oh man, I was one of the last people to give up on Brawl. (Well, I guess that is beside the people still playing it today.) For years, I said, "We cannot compare a game of one year to a game of seven years. The game will evolve, and exciting things will happen." Well, here we are. Brawl is almost as old as Melee was when Brawl came out. I know we're not quite there yet, but it's not looking good. By this point, Melee was taking off, and we were beginning to see just how deep it was. Brawl? I dunno. What's the newest thing we know what has really changed competitive play? What techniques are we fighting to conquer that may yet change competitive play?

And yeah... Brawl sucks for spectators.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

Oh man, I was one of the last people to give up on Brawl. (Well, I guess that is beside the people still playing it today.) For years, I said, "We cannot compare a game of one year to a game of seven years. The game will evolve, and exciting things will happen." Well, here we are. Brawl is almost as old as Melee was when Brawl came out. I know we're not quite there yet, but it's not looking good. By this point, Melee was taking off, and we were beginning to see just how deep it was. Brawl? I dunno. What's the newest thing we know what has really changed competitive play? What techniques are we fighting to conquer that may yet change competitive play?

And yeah... Brawl sucks for spectators.

That's not fair.

Amazing things have happened and the metagame has changed. "New techniques" a red herring and don't really matter. People got better at the game. A new player will get stomped by a mid-level player, and a mid-level player will get stomped by a top-level player; the better you are, the better you get at controlling Brawl, the better you get at movement, and the better you get at the game in general. Brawl has changed due to better mechanical skill, better understanding of the game and its mechanics, and even better techniques -- although they don't really matter that much when determining whether or not a game has grown, Brawl has had plenty, such as b-reversals, wavebounces, and platform cancels which are constantly becoming more integrated into our gameplay. Over time.

Here we are? Where are we exactly? How about a character that was once considered practically low tier winning the biggest major Brawl has ever seen and being considered a competitive character now? What about the very way we see and play Brawl having changed almost entirely in the past two years? Does none of that matter because it didn't magically become Melee?

I'm sorry if the way Brawl evolved isn't to your liking or isn't good enough for you, but to say that Brawl hasn't changed or that it hasn't evolved or that "exciting things" haven't happened is entirely false.

Brawl is a different game (and arguably an easier game) that emphasizes a different set of skills over the skills Melee emphasizes and does so at its own pace. It has its own flaws, and yes, its own evolving metagame.

Brawl is now five years old and only in the last two years or so has it really taken off. You wouldn't compare Melee in 2006 to Melee in 2001, and the common claim that Melee was still ****in' rad in 2001 doesn't hold water. It was awesome because it's what you had and you perceived the game differently. Smash was shiny and new, melee was fast-paced and interesting, a fresh take on what a fighting game could be. Of course you had fun with it in 2001. You didn't know better.

By the time 2006 rolled around, any 4 or 5 year old footage of the game would be unwatchable by anyone who knew the game and boring even to people that didn't.

Since Smash 4 will likely be a large improvement over Brawl (which is, as much as I love it, a reasonably flawed but good game), Brawl will likely not survive the transition, but it will not be because Smash 4 is like Melee but because Smash 4 is a better Brawl. We won't know what Brawl would look like in 5 years with constant play, but I can guaran-****ing-tee that it would continue to evolve and become more exciting like it has done since it was released.

Seriously, 4 years isn't enough, if you even lasted that long. You never gave it a chance.

 

[Mithost]

You guys are kinda overestimating the hate this game gets. Sure, some people from [insert fighting game here] will shut us out by calling us a party game, but you have to remember that we are not the only people that get this treatment.

Marvel gets more hate than us because of the infinites/lack of difficulty. Street Fighter 4 gets hate from SF2T players in the same way Melee players hate on Brawl. Every new fighting game (injustice, tekken tag, SFvT, Soul Calibur) that ends up at these tournaments gets hate for being shallow games that won't last the year. Older games get the old-fanboy treatment, and the entire FGC gets hate from other competitive genres like MOBA and FPS. The smash stigma that we are imposing too many rules to make the game competitive isn't even unique. Pokemon gets more hate for their restrictive and unwarranted rules than any other game does.

The OP is right here when saying that the problem is within our own community, but I think we can take it a step further and say it's a problem with one half of our community, the melee side. It is already a known fact that a large portion of melee players will shut the game out if it has even a single fragment of brawl left in it, while the Brawl community may or may not welcome it as Brawl 2.0. Melee fans are scrounging through every piece of gameplay footage (plus a lot of the cinematic stuff) for the long lost pieces of the Triforce game they love, while Brawl fans are hoping that it doesn't take a step further into casual territory.

I don't think the debate should be "what game should Smash 4 be more like". I think it should be "Is Smash 4 going to be a game that we can all enjoy?". In no way is either party going to migrate entirely from one game to another. Why should they? What will happen though is that a game will come out, and anyone willing to venture to the new game will join it's community. The only thing that can stop this community from being a joined one is the people who will find every spot in the game where their respective game does it better. If people start making remarks like "Combos are better in melee, so this game sucks" or "The stages in this game suck, I'm going back to brawl", even if the game strikes a really good medium between the two games and ends up being competitive, the community will continue to tear itself apart.

 

[Orngeblu]

Feel free to re-read what I said. I didn't backtrack one bit; I clarified for some people (like you apparently) who didn't get what I said the first time. I do also appreciate the ad hominem on me; I'm not a "nobody" in the sense that I was quite active and involved in the Brawl community a few years back (and spoilers: I'm planning to go super active again for smash 4), but even if I were, such an attack really says more about you than me. If you really did read what I said, as you seem to claim, you would notice that I merely mentioned that and several other conflicts. I said what happened in pretty factual terms that I honestly don't see how anyone who was actually there could dispute and that the conflict caused problems so we shouldn't have a repeat. It was others who re-ignited arguments, though the response that mentioning the conflict got is really telling. All I ever said was that we all need to get along and support each other. I definitely stand by what I've said several times since. If you find that message offensive, rather than coming on here to throw another round of attacks, just look in the mirror. Is this really what you want to be? Are you the guy who is bothered by the idea of everyone getting along and working together? I sure hope not, both for your sake and for all of ours. I didn't really want to dwell on this; I said I was done posting about it. But seriously, posts like that just boggle the mind; do you seriously not see the problem with the things you're posting?

Even more, if you're so dead-set on being negative, why are you even here? We're all here because we're enthused for smash 4. If you aren't enthused and aren't anticipating your future involvement with the smash 4 scene, it makes no sense for you to come on here. My motivations are to learn about a game I'm excited about while trying to lay groundwork for the smash 4 community to do as well as it can. I know I'm just one guy so my reach is limited, but I'm trying to do my part to help. What are your motivations?

Totally agreed. If only such a message could get out to people who don't go on Smash Boards, maybe it would help somewhat. I've been lurking here sometimes reading a lot of others wall of texts, and it's pretty interesting. So glad this thread was made.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/StopHavingFunGuys

Do I need to say any more?

This is what bugs me. Where do you, or others for that matter, get off in telling others what they believe "fun" is?

You believe that you are the victim of an attack, but you do the same thing, man. It isn't just Melee players ho attack people, it's Brawl players as well. Whenever someone mentions Melee there will always be some person who will say "move on its a different game","you just want Melee 2.0", "X element in the game is a glitch" or some statement that makes Melee players feel as if their opinion is completely invalid. What makes a Brawl players opinion so much more valid than someone elses? What's wrong with having fun by having 2 (or 4) players on even grounds to see who is more capable? Nothing; you're just inflecting what you perceive as just and fair on others without taking into account that everyone has their own opinions. Find your own definition of "fun".

And before you jump the gun, i'm not implying that smash should be a complicated fighter, but everyone should be able to say something without being scrutinized for having a different opinion. The same goes for Melee players who criticize Brawl players.

Also, the reality of the matter is...

I...I just...

I've been gone from Smash Boards for quite a while, after I finally got my hands on Brawl, and I haven't looked back since. I decided to hop back onto the site because this was the best place to go for information involving the new games, potential rumors and so on. I've never got along fully with the competitive crowd, but we sort of had our understandings back in the day.

But now?

You people disgust me. The OP was simply trying to unify people in the sense of just being good, decent people and enjoying the game, whether it's Brawl OR Melee. No one is saying you're terrible people for liking Melee. We're saying your terrible people for insulting, belittling, degrading, or otherwise acting like complete ****heads to those who happen to enjoy Brawl. (And yes, I know not all Melee fans are like this.) AND YET, there are those of you who refuse to stop these things and cling onto your desire to be complete *******es. Why? Hell if I know. Is it that important that you get to continue with your war? Is it that important that you HAVE to try and "Show Brawl players the error of their stupid ways?"

Can't we just have fun? Or has that been banned too?

Because...WAVEDASHWAVEDASHWAVEDASH. (Or No Items, Fox only, Final Destination, if you're feeling spiteful. :D )

That is all.

You're a god damn hypocrite.