Good post. Though one thing to remember is that part of the reason people in the community say Brawl sucks is because it's not Melee. SSB4 will likely such because it's not Melee or "Too close to Brawl." I don't think Brawl rewards you any less. You still have to learn the game. The better player still wins. You still can study it and dissect it. It's just different and tries to remove the barriers and silly techniques most players don't want to deal with. While you make a good point, the issue is more with Melee worship than with Brawl.
This is an incorrect stereotype that many Brawl players have of Melee advocates. People who advocate Melee do so for actual reasons, not by blind faith. While it can sometimes be hard to discern the reasons in amongst all the political banter and trivial, nonsensical arguments that people throw at each other on the forums, the reasons are there. And they're good ones.
Also, Brawl does reward you less because the principle Brawl was designed on demands that it does just that. It had to if Sakurai wanted to create a game that didn't heavily favor the player who was more skilled than the other. Melee is more rewarding primarily because you are rewarded for the reactive choices you make from moment to moment within a match. Making the correct choice nets you significant gains, and it makes you feel good for having either practiced as a player to make that happen, or being experienced enough to know how to.
If I grab you with a character that doesn't have monotonous, brain dead chain grabs like Falco or Dedede, the worst that's going to happen assuming the character isn't at too high of a % is they're going to take some damage, be thrown, and then the situation resets itself. You might gain a good positioning advantage as well. But that's mostly it. If you manage to grab someone in Melee though, you're rewarded with high damaging combos. Getting grabbed, and not getting grabbed,
actually matters in Melee. As do many things. Brawl is significantly more forgiving on almost all accounts, which makes it much more difficult to feel and be rewarded for making the correct decision and capitalizing on your opponents mistakes because they don't suffer the same level of repercussions.
It isn't about whether or not you have to learn the game in Brawls case. Its how much you have to (or don't have to) learn to stay on the same level of someone more skilled than you. It's not about how the better player still wins, its by how far of a margin do they win. It's not about whether or not you can study or dissect it, but how much
relavent information there is for you to learn and grow as a player. Melee delivers far more than Brawl in all of these respects.
I'm sorry, but I disagree with you 100% here. While I can sympathize why you would believe Melee promotists just blindly love it, that's not the reality.
I think it's impossible to actually get a game without any programming errors or bugs to be honest. The problem is wether or not if they are game breaking. And for my part if i have ever come across any bugs they were never game breaking. As for unintended compromising game mechanics, again it is almost impossible to have a game without those, espically fighters, programmers are only Hume. It again comes down to wethere it is game breaking. And the game breaking ones that are in Brawl are usually banned from competitive play if I am not mistaken. Melee probably had it's own programming errors and bug in it to and I am quite sure it had unintended game mechanics with some of them being compromising (and no I am not talking about L-cancling or wavedashing as I know L-cancling was made on purpose and that Wavedashing, while made unitnentonally, was left in there on purpose). Now I'm not trying to diss Melee or anything just trying to show that most games will have these kinds of things, sometimes moreso then others, but as long as it nothing game breaking (Like say the bug in Pandora's Tower, when you get to the last towers the game for some people will freeze up when they try to enter it, now that is game breaking). So even if a game has lots and lots of bug, as long as they are not game breaking they are not a problem. aAlright yea Tripping is annoying but hey it beings taken out in Smash4, so just deal with it if you can, I feel like its been whined about enough and is pointless to continue to bring up when it is getting fixed. As for character balance.... Any game that allows you to pick from a roster or whatever is going to have this issue. You will always have that one character that is considered the best character in the game, but at least MK is still beatablein competitive play as if I'm not mistaken a ZSS play defeated a MK player at soemthing called APEX which I presume is a big tourney thing (still new to the competitive scene of Brawl, sooo :/)
What I was trying to illustrate was that whether or not you look at the games code, or you look at the interactions or events within the game itself, a lot of it points to incredibly sloppy design. Honestly, I assume this is largely due to Sakurai not wanting to develop another Smash title (likely due to his resentment towards Melee's development), and being on a major time crunch. I'm not saying Melee is immaculate. I'm saying that it doesn't affect the overall experience and enjoyment of the player. Brawl's problems most certainly do.
You say it comes down to whether or not its gamebreaking, but there are
many things in Brawl that are gamebreaking. Whether or not they can be dealt with by rules and regulations by a tournament organizer isn't the point. It's still an inherent problem, and shows what I'm talking about; Brawl was not designed properly. I'd also like to note that there isn't problems associated with trying to create rules to solve these issues either. Tournament organizers have had massive headaches trying to debate how to appropriately handle planking in tournament matches. Chain grabs and grab release mechanics skew match ups. You can argue that's not game breaking (or broken, as correctly termed), but it still creates a poor game. Why should I be allowed to grab someone and down throw them to the ledge as Falco for a free stock? Why does Pikachu get a free kill on Fox every grab he gets? Why can Marth infinitely grab Lucas and end it with a kill move? Why does Dedede have a downthrow that gives him free ledge guard positioning and heavy damage on most of the cast, while also having infinites on certain characters that we have to circumvent by rules?
What you're essentially saying is that as long as the matches are playable, its okay. And as a competitive player, that's a good mindset to have, as it keeps the onus on you to do what it takes to win. But from a game designers perspective, you can't think with that mentality, or you produce a poor product.
Now that I got that out of my system.
I do prefer Brawl of Melee, it plays smoother to me. The main reason I prefer over Melee though is that it is not as combo based or all about combors or combos aren't always guaranteed to happen. I've tried play the "traditonal" Fighters is because I am unable to execute the long *** combos that require you to press so many different buttons in such a short amount of time. Now I realize Melee combos are easier to preform but I still can't preform them good cause I can only press buttons so fast. And this is why I prefer Brawl, it is not as combo based, you aren't always guaranteed to land the combo and you can preform much short combos that don't require you to press several different buttons in a short amount time and be totally fine. It becomes less technical and more strategy, which yes I prefer. Now don't get me wrong, I ain't saying Melee is bad or anything, I still love Melee and have good memories of when I was able to play it with my friends, but Brawl suits me better due to me being unable to preform the combos that require so amny buttons pressed in a short amount of time. Now can you see why some people might prefer Brawl over Melee, even prefer it competivily wise though the competitive scene isn't as big?
Sorry but I felt like I had to get that out there. And again let me state I am not trying to bash Melee just trying to show why I, and maybe some other people, prefer Brawl over Melee, but I still think Melee is a great game.
People often mistake my criticism for purely a preference of Melee vs Brawl by conceptual design, when the majority of what I'm trying to point out is the actual quality of the make of the game. Another way of saying it is like saying that you have a preference towards a Hummer vs a Ferrari. They're two totally different vehicles, and that's fine. They do very different things despite serving roughly the same intent, but it comes down to preference at the end of the day. What I'm trying to illustrate is that the Ferrari in this case was made properly during its manufacturing state, while the Hummer came with scratches and dents and bolts missing on the rims.
If you look in to Balanced Brawl, that's an excellent example of a mod that tries to rectify the problems inherent in Brawl while actually keeping it close to Brawls intended design philosophy. If Brawl had been made with roughly the same quality of design as the finished product Balance Brawl had, I would have far less complaints because it would be much less about quality vs quality and more about apples vs oranges. You should check it out actually.
And none of this is flaming, in case it wasn't clear.
