First off I'd like to applaud Cactuar for articulating his thoughts into something that actually has content. I have seen/heard literally hundreds of Melee players bash Project M in an entirely nonconstructive manner, insisting that characters are too easy or that their combos are too easy or good. Or even that something "isn't like Melee." Like, what the **** is that even supposed to mean when you don't even put any effort into making a reasonable comparison? I've been silently reading this topic waiting for an actually well constructed and reasoned post to begin a conversation with, and I think I've finally found that.
It is important to separate Attacking from Punishing/Comboing. Attacking is putting out a move with the intention to break neutral, to succeed to first hitting, to begin the Punishment game. The move you choose determines the type of Attacking you are performing. Projectiles are generally the least threatening Attack, as they have small or no true followup windows to lead to a Punishment game, which, when Attacking, leads to them being used to open the opponent up by stuffing a Defensive action or pressing the opponent to stay in place to prevent the projectile itself from hitting, which leads into a positional advantage, which leads into an advantageous second Attack. The strength of the individual move in attacking is determined by how it performs one of several purposes, but I'll get into that later if anyone wants me to.
Punishing/Comboing is the ability of the player to maximize followup damage from successfully winning the neutral game, with the point between winning neutral and beginning punishment being known as the conversion. This is where Vro's primary problem lies, as the way development seems to have gone is towards creating super simple Punishment followups for whatever characters. There seems to be too much focus on whatever characters the developers are working on with the intent of giving them planned out options for every combo scenario.
Mitigating Punishment doesn't even seem to be a concept that is addressed by development in P:M. This is essentially the opposite side of the combo game coin. The ability to control your character while being Punished. The ability to control the path/direction of that combo. In Melee, the player being combo's actually dictates how that combo will turn out. The player performing the Punishment is reading the decisions of the victim and responding. Truly good Mitigation leads the combo path into locations where the next action of the Punishing player can only be followed up once or twice, leading to locations where that player cannot follow, or where the victim can edgeslip and regain control, etcetc. In response to any single hit, a player with solid Mitigation will have several options that force the responding player to hardfollow that option. This means that the Punishing player has to read and successfully perform the correct followup for that DI, they cannot simply cover the full range by throwing themselves towards the trajectory and deciding when they get there. There are moments in Melee like Falcon potentially being able to cover 3 out of 4 ground recovery options with raptor boost. A player with good mitigation will direct his trajectory towards a location where the Falcon will have to seriously consider that they might be selecting the 1 of 4 instead of the 3 of 4, making their decision to use raptor boost a 50/50, despite it being a 75/25 in terms of options covered.
I find this is overplayed, at least to some degree. Sure, most combos on the newer characters are in fact designed. It'd be entirely unreasonable to expect the PMBR to simply throw a bunch of things at a wall and hoping some things stick. But when we design these combos, we more often than not just give a character an option that accomplishes a general task. rather than what you and many others seem to be implying, which is designing a full combo tree. Wario's Fair sends at a similar trajectory as Marth's tippered Fair (although slightly lower), this is designed to allow him to combo horzontally despite his limited grounded horizontal speed (which Marth has, but Wario lacks). Since it's slightly lower, there aren't cases like Marth's Fair where if you really DI way up high against a floatier character, his only option is to finish with a U-air and hope for advantageous staggered positioning. On the flip side, the lower trajectory means that downward DI is more effective. Since Wario doesn't fall nearly as fast as Marth, this means that even though the moves share a similar trajectory, their mitigation is different which necessitates that players learn proper mitigation for it. If you approach mitigating a combo by Wario in the same way as you do Marth's, you'll soon find yourself being struck with another fair/sourspot uair into a sweetspot uair/aerial SideB/Waft depending on your DI from there. Very rarely do we go "Alright, so if they DI out on this, X character doesn't have a followup. Let's fix that." In my Fair example, should the opponent DI down (depending on their original position), Wario is forced to accept an advantage on a purely positional and time-based level. The opponent is pressured at the ledge or in a tech chase situation where Wario must interact further to gain more reward. Of course, the optimal DI trajectory for Wario's Fair is sub-optimal for his U-air, which creates a similar RPS situation to Captain Falcon's combo game. Should you choose Combo DI on his Knee, you're sent flying off the stage at a horrendous angle and die. Should you choose survival DI and the Falcon chooses to Up-air, you've sentenced yourself to further up-airs or a Knee with more damage tacked on beforehand. The mitigation developed that eventually turned this would-be RPS situation into a fast-paced yet deep battle between the Falcon player's decisions and that of his opponent is extremely complex and is only discovered and implemented at a much higher level than almost any of the players posting here. I think it'd be an unnecessary tangent to go on to further explain what I mean, but my essential point here is that people tend to have rose-tinted glasses on when they compare Melee attributes to PM's. Often times, a move previously had two or three ways to mitigate a followup. In Project M, we've simply designed these moves to have fewer ways of mitigation (not none), which rewards match-up knowledge and punishes players trying to apply general concepts to every situation, something that I find most would agree contributes to Melee's greatness.
Forgive me as the background information necessary to make this next point is very clear to you already, however I need to illustrate it to other readers. Consider Fox's nair. As you, Vro, and Oracle have explained, it accomplishes a variety of things, however the favorable outcome of using it depends highly on a player's
micro-based use of the move. There are hundreds different ways you can use a Nair. In a given situation, there are very few threads of Nair that have a favorable outcome, and nearly infinitely more ways to do it incorrectly and face punishment. Players have over the years developed an ability to more or less determine and execute the proper threads for a favorable comboing outcome. Now, consider we throw Fox's nair, completely and entirely, on an new character. His physics are different, however, as he falls more slowly and his ground speed is about 10% slower. While players using this new Nair have to develop a new sense of "correctness" about using this new Nair on a micro-level, several of the same concepts apply and the development of the Punishment game is accelerated by a huge factor. Where Fox players spent 9 years determining proper use of the Nair for a comboing perspective, this new character's nair will perhaps take a couple months in the hands of a talented player, despite being slightly different. We've seen this in practice with moves like Wario's Fair, DK's Nair, and Wolf's pillar combos. The mitigation of this nair would in theory develop at a similarly accelerated rate, however in practice this isn't the case. It's abundantly clear to me that an overwhelming majority of players coming into PM with a heavy Melee background... they really don't put as much effort and time into developing the metagame as pure Project M players. As an example, between tournaments I spend a great deal of time theorizing combo strings, considering DI threads, and how I would respond to different mitigation techniques. Do Melee players who only ever play the game at tournaments do the same for mitigation? I think it's safe to assume that this isn't the case, almost always.
Furthermore, with a scene as limited as Project M's, it's unrealistic to expect even a Project M-focused player to be able to develop mitigation at a similar rate as one developing their punishment. There is simply not enough representation of certain characters, leading to some regions not being capable of developing mitigation for that character, in the meantime that character's punishment is developing. These factors contribute to PM's Punishment game being significantly more developed than its Mitigation game, which will be true regardless of how the game itself is designed until its metagame develops. More talented players need to take it seriously and regional mingling needs to occur before we'll start to see the balance shifted back to "what makes Melee so great."
That being said, I perfectly understand that many of the characters are booty buttcheeks. They truly do need to be buffed and changed to have less flaws so that they can reach that status of "viable". Finding a good place to buff a character to is definitely a challenge and I don't envy the position that the developers are in.
I'm glad you realize this, and it's something I was actually planning to elaborate on.
The balance of a character's Punishment game and their Neutral game is really hard to get right. A neutral game is often influenced heavily by a character's physics. Pressing left then right then left over and over has eventually developed to be the overwhelming standard for neutral game positioning in Melee, which transfers over to PM. It's a no-brainer that, along with several other factors, a major contributing factor toward what makes Melee's top 8 where they are is mobility (Fox, Sheik, Marth, Jigglypuff's aerial mobility, Captain Falcon, Ice Climbers) and the ability to disrupt it (Peach, Falco). A very simple way to make Zelda or Bowser viable is to increase their dashing speed to match Fox's. While they would still suffer from other weaknesses, they'd certainly be much better. Obviously, however, other factors such as character
personality and
diversity come into play. It becomes a very stale game if you take that route, because players enjoy using and interacting with unique media. To compensate for this with game balance in mind, these characters need to be given one of two things. They either need a proportionately extreme Punishment game to how poor their Neutral game is, or they need to be given unique tools that let them function in the Neutral game despite their limited mobility or an option that grants them mobility they didn't have previously. Examples include Ivysaur's Razor Leaf, G&W's land-cancel Food, Ness PK Fire, a DACUS that is effective at opening up varying Dash-Dance trees, etc etc.. What we found was that in many cases, if these unique neutral game options were potent enough, they downplayed fundamental Smash positioning ability and allowed players to succeed without having an understanding of it. Ike's 2.1 Quick Draw, Sonic's 2.1/2.5 Spindash cancels, Lucario's 2.1 Dash Attack, etc.. These options gave players the option to overwhelm players despite the mitigation for them being fully developed (you can't undevelop Dash Dancing). We've moved away from those types of designs, and instead moved toward a slightly more Punishment-heavy design on several characters.
On the subject of combos on FFers, they usually aren't designed at all. We'll give characters Up-Throws/Down-Throws and U-airs that are similar to moves present in Melee and previous demos that are useful on a wide variety of character weights/falling speeds. It just so happens that like in Melee, when you give a character comboing options that are reliable for a large percentage range against many characters, this makes them devastating on fast-fallers. The reason we don't address it after we notice it, though, is because it's necessary. Having a majority of the cast capable of 0-deathing FFers may be a little boring, but the alternative to this is to make a character
win neutral against Fox and Falco. The implications of that statement are absolutely terrifying. The character would win neutral against Fox and Falco and absolutely **** on everyone else's. Trust me... you really don't want that. Furthermore, people seem to underestimate the difficulty of comboing a fastfaller. Due to their extreme fall speeds, the window for continuing a combo on them is often under 4 frames and/or require multiple inputs with similarly tight windows, and the reaction window to do this properly is extremely small. Even then, you're ignoring the ramifications of accurately reacting to and punishing a FFer who has DI'd to a platform, initiating a staggered situation. surprise surprise, when 3/4 of them have a 1-frame move, this might could be a challenge. As you stated, while the end result of a FFer losing a neutral-game situation in Melee might very well be death, there's several points of interaction along the way due to Smash's system of Mitigation. As I've explained, this is still present in PM. It is extremely unfair to downplay the skill with which players currently punish, when in actuality the lack of skill is more often than not being demonstrated by the defending player. That's why I find it increasingly difficult to sympathize when I read comments such as these:
When I play P:M, I feel like an entire chunk of the Melee metagame has been ignored or cut out because of the lack of consideration for Mitigation. It doesn't feel like a diverse new metagame, it feels like some awkward forgotten stepchild, born between 64 and Melee.
Moving on:
I do think that the punishment game tends to develop prior to the mitigation game. In melee, this was because, to our knowledge, the moves were developed individually and with limited intent on how they could be used to string into one another. My concern in P:M isn't that the mitigation game is impossible.
My worry is that when a gap is being found with a character not being able to punish in a certain situation due to developing mitigation, the ability to continually change the characters is being used to fill those gaps. "Well if the opponent DI's in x direction out of this hit, I have no followup option. That is a flaw in this character and I will create a solution." This was very visible in Ike early on because of his recovery. "Well, if I dip too far below the stage, I have no ability to recover. I'll add the ability to walljump." "Well, if my opponent jumps when I'm charging my fb, they can just go up and over me. I'll add the ability to jump out of fb." "Well, if my opponent just shields the fb hit, I'm at a disadvantage. I'll add the ability to grab." (that last one might have just come about because of adding the ability to jump in the first place, but you get the point.) It's fine to be aware of character flaws, but it is an entirely different problem when you are analyzing the flaws and providing your character tools to specifically address those flaws rather than using a given tool set to thoughtfully overcome those flaws. Your character doesn't NEED to be able to autocombo into kill moves from grab. Your character doesn't NEED to be able to recover from every scenario. Your character doesn't NEED to have a followup to every move. Your character NEEDS tools that are developed primarily in the interest of how they affect his neutral game, but not to the point where they are impenetrable. Individual moves should not have 5 different developer intended purposes. Melee characters movesets do have a range of purposes, but they are ones we have developed with hard work, not with code. The full use of Fox's nair didn't become obvious for 9 years. Nairplaning didn't become really popular until that very set you linked to. The ways to use it are still changing.
I'm glad you brought up Ike, because it lets me make a few points I've been meaning to for a while. In this example specifically, Ike's entire moveset was developed before PM took off as a competitive game. His jump cancel and walljump out of Quick Draw were implemented in like 2010 by a developer who wasn't particularly competitively inclined with the intention of allowing a generally sluggish character the means of moving around. Similar to how the jump-canceling of Fox/Falco and later Wolf's shine adds a lot of depth and options, this is also much less "designed" than your average character change as it's open-ended, and the implications aren't always immediately obvious. An added benefit is that jump-cancels tend to increase both the skill floor and skill ceiling of a character. Ike indeed requires a great bit of technical proficiency to do what he does, and right now the general consensus is that he's designed extremely well. His weaknesses include his susceptibility to pressure (no quick OoS option, actual attacking options out of neutral have above-average startup other than jab, etc.) and projectiles/lingering hitboxes that disrupt his Quick Draw game. If you observe a high level Project M player with Ike match-up experience, you'll find that very rarely will Ike get anything close to a 0-death. This is because Ike was extremely popular in 2.1 and as such mitigation was forced to occur. After he was redesigned with an actual sweetspot system, his learning curve increased significantly, yet the opponent's mitigation didn't go anywhere. Combos that were previously somewhat difficult to perform suddenly became extremely difficult to do. As a result, the perceived balance of 2.6 Ike is much lower than if he were released in his current from back in April 2012, despite this new version of Ike theoretically being just marginally worse with the slight decrease of Side-B's base speed. With a generally more balanced version of the game out now, characters don't really see the same level of popularity that 2.1 Ike and Lucario saw, however, so mitigation isn't as forced as it was. If the game was left alone for a couple years, I'd be very surprised if the current tier lists held up, as the mitigation game has quite a bit left to go before it's even in the same league as the Punishment game's development.
We realize that at the moment the Punishment game may seem absurd, and in many cases it is indeed more potent than Melee's. Are there some cases where things are over-designed, even considering these points? Certainly. We aren't perfect, our slogan for a few years now has been "Everything is subject to change" for a reason. We know that with time, the information we have available to us will expand, and things we once thought fit into the game just fine are later determined outliers that contribute negatively to the big picture. Generally speaking, however, things aren't as they seem. It seems like the Mitigation for these attacks isn't present or very strong. That's because it isn't. The players haven't developed it to be so yet. Overall, it'd be far more "forced" design to modify these moves for incorrect mitigation to succeed. What would be most helpful, rather than trying to convince us of a design philosophy that is more or less already agreed with, is to point out specific examples of moves where you feel that (after attempting to develop proper mitigation), still go against the grain on this point. It's very easy to come up with and state general design philosophies. It's extremely difficult to implement them on a diverse and and large cast of characters when at the end of the day, the philosophies themselves are subject to interpretation.
I suppose it's a shock to people's systems because the rest of the character isn't complete garbage anymore.
. P:M has some flaws, we all can agree. But I think that for a COMMUNITY project it is really impressive and I love it to death. There is sooo much more variety in tournaments, more characters to master, and it's just so much fun to play. This is a game that both casuals and competitive players can play. Players like Mango and Hax just need to adapt and learn the new matchups and keep playing instead of having tags like "F_PM" or making unnecessary Reddit posts like "It's not too shabby but just PLAY MELEE!". This game is STILL in development. There are still new things to learn you just need to keep playing. I'm finding new things about this game EVERYDAY! Plus they are adding more characters so we're going to have even more to explore. Plus they have a working clone engine which means MORE character and new things and matchups to learn. I think this game is far from being uninteresting or "some awkward forgotten stepchild, born between 64 and Melee."