Game Design: Pros and Cons of balancing the meta-game.

[Paquito]

I've never bothered following people in competitive scenes, so I only just found this old Mew2King rant from four months back. There was a thread about this a while ago, but it got locked, and I'm interested in talking about his forth point, specifically:

4) It's dumb that instead of letting a meta develop, people change/nerf/buff whoever they are biased against at the time (and it's more of a popularity/voting contest than what should actually be done most of the time to be honest

Flame-Retardant: The following things will be considered off-topic in this thread, and will be reported as such:

• Opinions about Mew2King as a person, and speculation about why he made that rant
• Opinions about the Project M team as people.
  
• Opinions about players who prefer whatever version of Smash
• Extensive discussion about his other points in that Reddit Post (unless it's related to this point).

Anyway, I don't know everyone else's gaming background, but I've spent a lot of time with the original Starcraft, Diablo II, and League Of Legends. All three of these games have meta-games that were/are actively updated by their dev teams, based on how their games were being played in the wild. In the case of Starcraft and LoL, these buffs and nerfs were very often influenced by what was happening in the tournament scene, especially when one particular ability or strategy seemed to be dominating during that tournament.

After reading that post, it occurred to me that meta-balancing is probably pretty foreign to the fighting-game scene. Because fighting-games are so fast paced (where the ability to react to a few frames worth of action is critical), player rankings that the community respects generally aren't based on network play. Because of that, I doubt it's been a common practice among fighting-game developers to do much in the way of balance post-release. (I could be wrong, I'd love to see counter-examples). Learning to deal with a fighting game's meta, "as is", is probably ingrained in the culture.

I'm the opposite, and one of the things I like about Project M is the fact that its devs are eager to evolve the meta. Where do people here stand on this?

 

[FrozenHobo]

Can you link to the M2K rant? I hadn't heard of this yet and I like rants.

 

[Paquito]

Can you link to the M2K rant? I hadn't heard of this yet and I like rants.

The link is in the first sentence of the OP

 

[FrozenHobo]

The link is in the first sentence of the OP

 

[Binary Clone]

I've never bothered following people in competitive scenes, so I only just found this old Mew2King rant from four months back. There was a thread about this a while ago, but it got locked, and I'm interested in talking about his forth point, specifically:



Flame-Retardant: The following things will be considered off-topic in this thread, and will be reported as such:

• Opinions about Mew2King as a person, and speculation about why he made that rant
• Opinions about the Project M team as people.
  
• Opinions about players who prefer whatever version of Smash
• Extensive discussion about his other points in that Reddit Post (unless it's related to this point).

Anyway, I don't know everyone else's gaming background, but I've spent a lot of time with the original Starcraft, Diablo II, and League Of Legends. All three of these games have meta-games that were/are actively updated by their dev teams, based on how their games were being played in the wild. In the case of Starcraft and LoL, these buffs and nerfs were very often influenced by what was happening in the tournament scene, especially when one particular ability or strategy seemed to be dominating during that tournament.

After reading that post, it occurred to me that meta-balancing is probably pretty foreign to the fighting-game scene. Because fighting-games are so fast paced (where the ability to react to a few frames worth of action is critical), player rankings that the community respects generally aren't based on network play. Because of that, I doubt it's been a common practice among fighting-game developers to do much in the way of balance post-release. (I could be wrong, I'd love to see counter-examples). Learning to deal with a fighting game's meta, "as is", is probably ingrained in the culture.

I'm the opposite, and one of the things I like about Project M is the fact that its devs are eager to evolve the meta. Where do people here stand on this?

There are a few problems with his 4th point, and also a couple of pieces that have really already been addressed at this point.

First, the PMDT has been letting the meta develop. 3.0 to 3.5 was about a year's gap. That is plenty of time for development. It isn't as if the PMDT is whipping out reactionary monthly patches. They're patching on a much wider time frame and allowing development of meta at this point.

Second, the game is essentially in beta anyway. This is not the full release. Not by longshot. The entire point of a beta is often to be able to make frequent patches to gameplay and balance to test out different things. If PM was at its full release stage, these complaints would have a lot more merit.

He also notes later on in point 7 that the best way to fix the game, in his opinion, is very tiny nerfs. Essentially, that's most of what 3.5 was. It was small changes over a wide swath of characters to push balance more towards where it needed to be. The biggest changes were removing "gimmicks" that he also says carry some players too much.

I think evolving the meta isn't inherently a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, look at Melee. The game itself hasn't changed in over a decade, and it's still doing very well for itself. But purposeful evolution of the meta, in PM's case, evolution towards balance, I do think is a good thing, and presently I think the PMDT is approaching it well by allowing ample time for development of each patch before making changes.

 

[Paquito]

He also notes later on in point 7 that the best way to fix the game, in his opinion, is very tiny nerfs. Essentially, that's most of what 3.5 was. It was small changes over a wide swath of characters to push balance more towards where it needed to be. The biggest changes were removing "gimmicks" that he also says carry some players too much.

It's entirely possible that sentiments like Mew2King's encouraged the Dev team to keep the nerfs to a minimum. That's a good thing, both because it was the right decision, and also because it shows they're receptive to feedback.

I think evolving the meta isn't inherently a good thing or a bad thing. I mean, look at Melee. The game itself hasn't changed in over a decade, and it's still doing very well for itself. But purposeful evolution of the meta, in PM's case, evolution towards balance, I do think is a good thing, and presently I think the PMDT is approaching it well by allowing ample time for development of each patch before making changes.

Agreed. I think, whatever changes they make, if it changes the game to be more in line with the Project Goals, then it's the right decision.

 

[Ningildo]

Fox (and the rest of the Melee tops) have already had meta development for over a decade. People know what he (and others) can do and, frankly, it's stupid that he can invalidate a good deal of the cast due his design. In Melee, people just had to deal with it because the next "update" was years away (and what a update it was for them), but we have no reason to deal with something that skews the game in a character's favor with no counterplay available, even after a year of exploring for that (I mean, it's a large, passionate community we have here and I doubt we are incapable of getting most if not all info about the current version within that time).

 

[Foo]

There are a few different styles of balance, and there is merit to all of them.

First is to try and have the game as balanced as possible on release, and then only fix game breaking aspects, generally bugs or exploits.

Another is to keep the core of the game the same overall, but try to tweak each character slightly until the game is "balanced." This method also includes fixing game breaking stuff like in the first (duh)

Thirdly is the most active form of balancing that you will see most obviously in league of legends. In this method, you'll have the first two methods in conjunction with meta shifting changes. Riot is constantly adding new content, adjusting characters and even changing the map as a whole. This prevents the meta from ever getting stale, and constantly facilitates a flow of new ideas, strategies and team comps. Back in my league hayday, I would study the patch notes and analyze exactly what this meant. Every item change involved me figuring out what etc. etc. I won't bore you with the details.

Basically, all of these styles have their own merit. The first one rewards pure mastery of the game. You must figure out (or read up on) the optimal way to play and what characters are the strongest. Once you have done this, it is PURELY you against the other player, and the game is simply a medium for this. Once the meta for that game stales, there are no more surprises, gimmicks, or tricks. It's just you against the other player. Sounds great right? Well, there's a problem. The meta game has to stale for this to occur. For some, that's great, but for others, that's bad. The favored characters are almost going to be favored because they are "broken" in some way, and if you don't accept that that's just the way it is, you are going to hate it. Personally, I despise playing against spacies and sheik which is a big reason I don't like melee so much (the biggest reason is the clunky dash).

On the other spectrum, you have gameplay where adaptability is a key skill, rather than mastery. With a fresh metagame, you will not have had time to prepare for every strategy you will face off against, so you will have to figure out what to do as the time comes, and so will your opponent. In a game like melee, you have to adapt to the playstyle you are against, but in PM, you must adapt to the game itself in real time as well as the other player. For people who love experimenting with and analyzing new things, like myself, the third style is preferable, but for people like m2k, who want to know everything before the game starts and just test raw skill vs raw skill, the first or second method is better. (I also have found that spectators prefer the third, for the most part)

It all comes down to preference, and it's hard to say what path the PMDT will take. This game is still in beta, so they may just call the game "done" at some point and only come back if something akin to the infinite cape glitch is discovered or they may create a constantly evolving meta like league. Only time will tell.

P.S. There is absolutely no way that anything convinced the PMDT to keep nerfs to a minimum lol. I've have never seen the nerf bat swung so hard and rapidly in any game before xD

 

[Paquito]

Somehow I think he's just angry over everyone complaining about a character that, in his eyes, is balanced. I mean he wants the meta to develop to get counter strategies for what is first perceived as OP/Broken/Cheap/Gimmick. But

Fox (and the rest of the Melee tops) have already had meta development for over a decade. People know what he (and others) can do and, frankly, it's stupid that he can invalidate a good deal of the cast due his design. In Melee, people just had to deal with it because the next "update" was years away (and what a update it was for them), but we have no reason to deal with something that skews the game in a character's favor with no counterplay available, even after a year of exploring for that (I mean, it's a large, passionate community we have here and I doubt we are incapable of getting most if not all info about the current version within that time).

I would've liked some examples of us just *****ing and whining and throwing a hissy fit about something dumb and wanting to change it next update instead of finding counterplay in a year in that point of his, cause now it just seems he's taking a jab at the community with no evidence to back it up. Also he contradicts himself to an extent by complaining about the broken characters in 3.02 (they were though) and saying that he had to deal with massive nerfs to fox (...), despite saying that people should adapt (in the case of his gripe with Fox nerfs) and need to find counterplay to "OP" things/characters ( in the case of the broken characters). But eh...

I find his whole "fox dies to combos/cgs so is obviously not stupid character" statement a bit...off, but this isn't the thread for that.

I crossed off the off-topic stuff.

 

[Ningildo]

I crossed off the off-topic stuff.

Fair enough.

Balance and how that balance is achieved is heavily influenced by what exactly you play competitively, though. Melee (and most FGCs) have a "deal with it till the next game" kind of mentality, while people like you prefer to change the game for the sake of balance. Rather, in most other fighters, you adapt to the meta, which will always have a point of stagnation where everything is known and nothing changes, for better or for worse, balance wise. In PM, however, where changes to the game happen far quicker due not having to wait for another installment, the meta adapts to the players and developers so it can fit their version of balance.

Regardless of what you think is the better way of playing a game competitively and finding balance within it, the updates do happen with a popularity vote when it comes down to it. I do think that it should be a vote on what kind of balance the update should go for rather then favoritism or hate on specific characters, though.

That's why I didn't stay angry about my main's nerfs (for the most part), but don't get why Fox gets off effectively scotfree because of favoritism. It's contradictory if the PMDT keeps a character who invalidates a lot of the cast unchanged when they are setting out for a game where every character has a good shot at winning and thus, where character variety is diverse.

 

[Paquito]

Balance and how that balance is achieved is heavily influenced by what exactly you play competitively, though. Melee (and most FGCs) have a "deal with it till the next game" kind of mentality... you adapt to the meta, which will always have a point of stagnation where everything is known and nothing changes, for better or for worse, balance wise

Have you played a lot of fighting games? I've only really played Smash and Soul Caliber 2, and wasn't competitive with either. I was assuming the "just deal with it" mentality is ingrained in the FGC, but I never ran it the thought by someone who was part of it.

 

[Ningildo]

Have you played a lot of fighting games? I've only really played Smash and Soul Caliber 2, and wasn't competitive with either. I was assuming the "just deal with it" mentality is ingrained in the FGC, but I never ran it the thought by someone who was part of it.

I've played SSF4 and UMvC3 among others, but never really got into the competitive side of those games. All I play competitively are essentially children's games (Smash, Pokemon), so...

I'm theorizing here too, but when playing more traditional fighting games, you have no other option then to deal with it (which in some cases is good, as it avoids a scrubby mentality of "everything that I lose to is stupid and cheap"). And so you would get that mentality eventually down the line.

Of course, it becomes an issue when you start thinking that your way of...thinking is absolute and necessary to improving whatever it has relation to and dismissing anyone thinking otherwise as a ignorant fool (an issue not only found in this situation, sadly), stifling discussion.

 

[McSlur]

Because of that, I doubt it's been a common practice among fighting-game developers to do much in the way of balance post-release. (I could be wrong, I'd love to see counter-examples). Learning to deal with a fighting game's meta, "as is", is probably ingrained in the culture.

Skullgirls balances as it updates, kinda. I'm not trying to counter your argument, just showing an example.

 

[Crulex Crystallite]

My take on it is this:

1. Melee and PM are not the same thing, nor should they be. Everyone has their own slice of cake. PM is my jam. No other smash game can you jump out of bowser bomb, or have a Roy vs. Lucas or Mewtwo vs. Ivysaur matchup. It plays with similar mechanics of melee, plus is missing some but has it's own mechanics that melee doesn't really have as well. Dacus and things like Ganon's suicide choke comes to mind. It feels like there are far more options and character matchups in PM than there are in Melee. Players play what they like more.

2. Everyone is themed. Bowser is a tank, Wolf is a juggler, Squirtle is slippery and Game and Watch is a glass canon. Everyone has their own unique playstyle, and even characters with similar game mechanics play radically different (link/toon link, Kirby/DDD/Jiggs). I mean, even Lucario is the most unique thing I've seen in Smash with his on hit cancels.

3. Melee's metagame doesn't change, only new aspects are discovered and aren't changed, PM's does. This is where things get interesting, because there are pros and cons to changing game parameters. Melee GnW can never be top tier, his shield is bugged and he can't realistically use it like the rest of the cast. Despite players who can "do well" with Bowser, his game metrics make him easy to grab and punish/combo 0-death.

However, as stated above, if PM changes TOO much, then we wont' have a stable metagame. So far, I feel like the PMBR has done a fantastic job. As a Bowser main especially, I love that I finally have a tool to get around projectiles that stun (dash attack).

 

[666blaziken]

PMDT themselves said there will be a gold release where they will no longer be making any balance patches, but they want to make sure that the game won't be run by gimmicks and auto-combos, or anything extremely broken first. So I think it's fine to patch and balance things up to a point, then let the meta develop once the dust settles.

 

[Paquito]

It all comes down to preference, and it's hard to say what path the PMDT will take. This game is still in beta, so they may just call the game "done" at some point and only come back if something akin to the infinite cape glitch is discovered or they may create a constantly evolving meta like league. Only time will tell.

It's worth noting that Riot's goals are different than those of the PMDT. Riot's a business whose revenue stream revolves around the release of new champions on a regular basis. As you pointed out, this necessitates constant rebalancing, and the meta is going to gradually evolve as new champions add new gameplay options.

PMDT is a volunteer effort that's looking to create a version of Smash Brother's that's as closely in line with their stated project goals as possible. @ 666blaziken mentioned that they ultimately want to have a final release, so they're definitely not interested in changing the meta just for the sake of variety.

 

[ninjuh1124]

Throwing in my $0.02

Coming to Smash fresh off of a Dota obsession, I'm a huge fan of IceFrog balance. Balance patches come in fairly infrequently, say every few months. On top of that, the unique aspect of a hero is almost never nerfed, and if it is, it's to dial it back due to how absurd it is, never because of how it's being used. Icefrog doesn't design with an intention in mind, that's for the players to decide, and let's be honest, it's that kind of mentality that made Melee so great. Shines weren't intended to be offensive gimps. Hell, the exploits were never really seen as a huge deal because the thought was, "how could players possibly figure out how to make this useful." The only reason they're in is because of the lack of development time, but I digress. The last point I want to make about Dota, (and this will be a comparison to LoL and I will preface this with: I am not trying to start a Dota vs LoL flame war, this is my opinion and I respect LoL for what it and has achieved), is the incredible diversity with regards to heroes and their abilities, and items and builds, compared to LoL. And this goes back to my previous point of Icefrog not taking away the unique aspects of a hero. Look at Phantom Lancer: he had recently gotten a nearly complete overhaul of his character, yet the design of the character, the here's-your-illusion-army feel of his character was not lost.

To sum up the above, Icefrog likes:
* for the community to decide how to use his heroes
* to not act as an enforcer of the metagame
* to keep heroes unique, but not ridiculously better than any other

For a comparison to 3.02 to 3.5, I'm going to use ZSS, who I was considering maining when I first got into PM (and again, I'm prefacing this with: I don't hate 3.5 ZSS, this is my opinion and respect others' opinions of her changes). 3.02 ZSS was amazingly unique. She had very few gimmicks in comparison to the rest of the cast, and so she felt a lot more rewarding when pulling off a good string of combos. And she felt very much unique, with dash-canceled shots, an awkward tether-grab, her various recovery options, etc. She was all-in-all a very fun character to play. Even though I did end up with the FE Swordsmen in the end, I still popped in with ZSS from time to time. When 3.5 hit, she felt extremely different. She couldn't dash-cancel her Paralyzer. She was given a boring normal grab. Her aerial game changed. All in all, she wasn't the same character she was before. A bit was lost in translation. Again, I'm not hating on 3.5 ZSS, I just feel like she was changed a bit more drastically than it was intended. Now I'm only a casual player with ZSS, so my feelings about her are far less informed, but in my opinion, I don't agree with some of her changes.

But let's now look at Roy. Here's a character that had a lot going for him in 3.02. He had a solid combo game, could easily pop up most characters and juggle for days, but suffered from a fairly predictable recovery. 3.5 rolled in and, well, Roy barely changed. A few changed hitboxes changed to be more inline with Melee. Upair's landing lag increased, making upair not combo so easily into upair. A meteor became a spike, which in my opinion was unneeded, but it didn't take away from his game. I'm not a high level player, but from my perspective, Roy's game was not changed a bit. His game was tweaked, but in the end, he was still Roy. This is more of what I expected 3.5 to be: tweaks so that the game was less janky, but few sweeping changes across the board.

 

[4tlas]

So far, I have agreed with most everything that people have said. Since those points have already been brought up, I will mention one of the weaker points that hasn't: the overall preference of fighting game players.

A fighting game boils down to a battle of skill between 2 players, with all relevant factors being (mostly) predictable. There are 2 main components to this 'skill', a cerebral and a physical component.

The cerebral component is measured in terms of how quickly and correctly a player can evaluate the current game scenario. Understanding what is happening can come from intelligence or practice (really both), and understanding quickly can come from wit or practice (mostly wit I think). "Frequent patching" diminishes the effectiveness of practice in both cases, which is something many players dislike. As someone mentioned above, this is that "mastery" over the game that is being affected.

The physical component is measured in terms of how quickly and consistently a player can perform the action they intend to do. This comes from reflexes and practice, and practice is critical to create muscle memory. It may be more important than natural reflexes. Fortunately, physical practice is still often doable despite "frequent patching", due to the fact that any player can sit down with the game and all they need is the time.

Fighting games are generally fast-paced and action-oriented. I find that players who enjoy fighting games (at a competitive level) have at least decent reflexes, while mental capabilities vary wildly. Many players with excellent mental capacity either do not have the physical ability to play fighting games or do not have the desire to, due to preferring strictly mental challenges. In comparison to other gamers, I would say fighting game players generally rely on practice to form their mental game, and mental practice is by far the most negatively effected by frequent patching.


Learning to adapt and re-evaluate a new meta is a skill. I personally think it is a fine skill to have in a competitive fighting game, but I understand that others may not. I am not trying to say "fighting game players are dumb" or something. All I am trying to point out is that practice (and thus the mastery route mentioned before) is critical in fighting games due to the sheer speed they are played at. Even something like Starcraft doesn't change the physical commands for controlling units, as that would destroy any pro player's game. As another poster said before with regards to Dota balancing, keeping characters' functionality the same but buffing/nerfing the effectiveness of those functions would probably be the best method all around, as players would not have to drastically alter their physical training, and the meta of characters would remain vaguely similar.

 

[Paquito]

Can someone define for me what a "gimmick" is?

Skullgirls balances as it updates, kinda. I'm not trying to counter your argument, just showing an example.

No worries, I actually wanted examples of fighting games that patch

 

[666blaziken]

Can someone define for me what a "gimmick" is?



No worries, I actually wanted examples of fighting games that patch

A gimmick is an easy trick used to win, but only works because of the lack of knowledge on the opponent's part/doesn't expect it. Take the level 1 ratatta trick called FEAR (Focus sash, Endeavor, (quick)Attack, Ratatta) which against someone who just thinks "oh, I will just attack it since it's so weak" will lose to this strategy, where as anyone who knows this trick can just send in a healer/status user and win that way. Some are harder to deduce though, such as using puff and ducking a grab in melee/pm/smash 4 and resting as a punish is a straight up gimmick.

The reason why people said that 3.02 was gimmicky was because characters such as diddy kong and mewtwo ran the metagame. The problem was that these gimmicks actually won matches. Did they really require high skill to win? Diddy kong had tricks with his bananas that combo-ed into fsmash easily because of how hard it was to tech the bananas at that time, he also had side b auto-combo into fair, so if you knew he was going for that, you could've punished him, and mewtwo had a hover nair trick, in which if the opponent was shielding, he could teleport, float, use the nair and excert free shield pressure simply because he was mewtwo. The main issue with 3.02 was that the things that would've been broken in melee (such as pk fire hitting on shield) didn't make the characters (like ness) top tier because there was always someone with more gimmicks and auto combos. PM 3.5 gave a lot of nerfs to everyone because they knew the metagame wouldn't turn out well if the top tiers continued using their gimmicks/autocombos, and that's why other video game developers like to patch their games.

 

[Bleck]

Can someone define for me what a "gimmick" is?

"gimmick" is professional level johns

 

[ninjuh1124]

I define a gimmick as a trick that takes next to zero skill to perform. They're supposed to be easy to punish once you know about them, and easily punished if you properly work around them. In essence, gimmicks should only work once. However, in 3.02, they were extremely hard to punish (teleport Nairs, diddy bananigans, etc).

 

[Foo]

The only real difference between a "gimmick" and a technique is if the other player is familiar with it. In a parallel universe where mewtwo was god tier and melee, and fox was low (and couldn't jump cancel shine) shine would have been considered a gimmick in PM and acting out of TP would have been a "fundamental" or some nonsense.

A character specific technique is always a gimmick until the player you are against figures it out. You don't have to be over reliant on something for it to be a gimmick either. Basically, gimmick doesn't actually mean anything. The only thing that decides what's a gimmick and what's not is the person playing against it, but it doesn't actually mean anything.

Either that, or gimmick means an easy and cheap strategy that bad players can use to beat players better than them solely because of poor balance and most people use gimmick incorrectly or at the wrong time.

 

[Strong Badam]

Can someone define for me what a "gimmick" is?

Nope. Everyone has a different definition of it and uses it as if everyone understands what they mean.

 

[666blaziken]

The only real difference between a "gimmick" and a technique is if the other player is familiar with it. In a parallel universe where mewtwo was god tier and melee, and fox was low (and couldn't jump cancel shine) shine would have been considered a gimmick in PM and acting out of TP would have been a "fundamental" or some nonsense.

A character specific technique is always a gimmick until the player you are against figures it out. You don't have to be over reliant on something for it to be a gimmick either. Basically, gimmick doesn't actually mean anything. The only thing that decides what's a gimmick and what's not is the person playing against it, but it doesn't actually mean anything.

Either that, or gimmick means an easy and cheap strategy that bad players can use to beat players better than them solely because of poor balance and most people use gimmick incorrectly or at the wrong time.

Yeah, you could call fox's shine a gimmick, but it made him a difficult character to use, and his timing for shine was really hard in comparison to other characters. I think people considered it a gimmick in melee as well for a while, but then as time passed and people found a way around it and around fox in general, so both of these things made the shine acceptable in the community, and I think the same thing will happen in smash 4 where diddy's dthrow to uair will just be another technique that the players have to adapt too.

 

[Foo]

Yeah, that's exactly what I was saying. The only thing that makes a gimmick a gimmick is that people aren't used to playing against it. If shine was a PM specific thing, everyone would call it a gimmick for years. It just proves my point further that shine was called a gimmick in melee before people got used to it.

 

[MegaMissingno]

One thing to keep in mind is that 3.5 was not a balance patch. It was a design patch, aimed to address things that had gotten out of hand and didn't line up with the project's design goals. Recoveries could arguably be called balanced in that almost all the cast was really ridiculous, which means that ultimately nobody is. But it wasn't healthy for the game, so they hit the drawing board and revamped it all. Nobody in their right mind would say that Zelda was overpowered, but they still threw her our and remade her from scratch because they didn't like what her playstyle had become.

While we're on the subject of gimmicks, I'll give my definition. Something that isn't necessarily overpowered, but is just stupid and annoying to deal with and play against. Gimmicks are always a design issue, but not always a balance issue. Many of the gimmicks thwacked in 3.5 weren't imbalanced, they were just poor design.

3.5 made a ton of radical changes, more than any previous patch, but that's because 3.5 was meant to be a dramatic overhaul. Now that the game has a saner design foundation, I expect future patches will be much more subdued when they're just addressing balance again. And if bigger changes do happen, they'll be for reasons other than balance.

 

[Bleck]

so basically what we're saying here is that a gimmick is any move that a character can use to be good unless it takes more than one button press and/or isn't on fox

 

[shairn]

Yeah, that's exactly what I was saying. The only thing that makes a gimmick a gimmick is that people aren't used to playing against it. If shine was a PM specific thing, everyone would call it a gimmick for years. It just proves my point further that shine was called a gimmick in melee before people got used to it.

Cancellable shine exists since 64, albeit in a slightly different but similarly functional form.

 

[Pwnz0rz Man]

I would say that a gimmick is a move that overshadows just about everything else that a character can use, forcing them to primarily rely on it in order to get anything done or by itself being the single most powerful option that they have at any given time. Under that definition, Ness's PK Fire could be considered a gimmick in 3.02, as could probably a good deal of things from 3.02 and previous releases.

Just what I'd always thought up when I heard people talking about gimmicky gameplay.

 

[Joe73191]

When people say 'balance' a lot of times I feel that they are looking for some tournament results to reflect that balance as if they want a different character to win every tournament. The problem is skill comes into play and there will always be top players who main a character and win with that character. When that happens no matter how balanced the game is people will cry for nerfs on that character. Zero's Pit won more national tournaments in 3.02 than anyone else. Does that mean Pit is untouchable? No, maybe it just means Zero was better than most everyone else. 3.5 went way too far. People loved PM and loved how it played. It was the most balanced Smash we have ever seen and yet look what everyones crying has done. I don't want PM to die out, but unless the PMDT fixes some of the things they killed in 3.5 that is the future I see for PM.

 

[Foo]

That's a little overdramatic. First off, Zero was far from the only Pit player. Secondly, Zero was basically the only person who thought pit was the best PM character. Thirdly, Pit was far from the only character nerfed in PM. Fourthly, PM 3.5 has been FAR from an unsuccessful patch.

Basically everyone got nerfed in PM because the PMDT decided that the strategy of trying to buff everyone up to fox's level wasn't a good idea, and instead is trying to shoot for melee high tier instead. I think this is the right approach to take except for one minor issue (cough spacies cough mostly fox cough), but that's baside the point. PM is still in "beta" so large changes like that are going to be made until they have their "full release." Pitt is also far from a bad character. He's still at least a solid upper mid if not a high tier and mewtwo is probably still high or top tier. No characters (except cough fox cough apparently cough) deserve to be top tier, and if you think PM is going to die off because one of your mains went from top tier to high tier, calm down.

There has been a relatively low amount of complaining about nerfs considering just how much was changed because they did it very well. Also, almost all of that complaining was just knee-jerk salt about their characters getting nerfed without realizing that everyone got nerfed (Insert Sonic boards saying 3.5 sonic is unplayable on day of release). Some of the complaints are justified in my opinion, like olimar getting nerfed too hard, up-b tethers getting nerfed too hard, ZSS playstyle getting heavily changed, and maaaaaaaaaaaaybe squirtle and some others, but no game is perfect.

 

[Joe73191]

I used zero as an example because he won a lot. Pit isn't even the place I would start if I wanted to complain about who got the most uncalled for or most overbearing nerfs. Why not look at Snake or Toon Link or Mewtwo (Yes mewtwo was slightly overpowered, but honestly they took a sludge hammer to him.)

They took a wrecking ball to the game rather than a fine tooth comb.

 

[MegaMissingno]

3.02's problems ran so deep it needed a wrecking ball to really fix things. Like I said, this was actually more about design than balance.

 

[J3f]

The PMDT destroyed the Meta that had built around all previous iterations of Project M with 3.5. The patch was both a step to the side in a new direction and a huge step backwards for the Metagame. 3.5 is to 3.0 as 3.0 is to Melee, it's a completely new game compared to previous versions of Project M. It's a smouldering crater of it's former glory which may some day reach the same heights of Meta and balance that 3.02 enjoyed. The massive shift turned off a lot of players and demonstrated the deep ingrained favoritism Melee top tiers have enjoyed.

There was a smart way of fixing 3.0 without gutting everything. Very few major changes should have been made (Zelda Side-B) and they should have been handled with care. Worse is that the major changes that did need to be made weren't (Fox Nerfs, Large Character Buffs, etc.).

As far as I'm concerned the game might as well be called Project N 0.1. What's worse is we all got to see what a balanced and fun Smash game would be like and now it was taken away.

 

[MegaMissingno]

3.02's meta was in a really rough spot and needed to destroyed for the good of the game's future. If you think 3.02 was balanced, you are delusional. "The M stands for Recovery" was really toxic, and nobody should be able to deny there was a serious problem there. Too many characters were overcentralized around gimmicks, and matchups were a mess based on whose gimmicks hard counter whose. Things had moved too far away from the game's Melee roots. There's a very good reason why they had to upend the tea table here.

Fox did get nerfed actually, upsmash is weaker now. That's all that was needed really, PM Fox is not nearly as broken as whiners keep making him out to be. He's still super fragile and easy to both combo and edgeguard. As versatile as Shine is it's still not something that hard counters any character, unlike say tethers which much of the cast literally couldn't do anything about. And plenty of characters got "buffed" simply by not getting nerfed as hard as other characters, and no longer having to deal with certain gimmicks they couldn't get past before. Which is a better approach to take in response to how bad power creep had gotten, you can't just keep buffing and buffing and buffing more than you ever nerf. That's how we wound up with all of 3.02's problems in the first place.

People have been asking for nerfs on recovery and gimmicks for such a long time. Now everyone's all "Wait, no, I just meant other characters, not mine!" And this is coming from a Melee Puff main and 3.02 Zelda main here, surely if anyone should be complaining it'd be me.

 

[Paquito]

It looks like "The game's too gimmicky" effectively just means "the game's meta hasn't matured". People discovering new techniques before other people figure out how to counter them is a thing that happens when games are newly released, including every major release of Project M. It seems reasonable enough not to prefer a game because of this, but it's also the case that Project M 3.5 is pretty much in the same boat as Sm4sh, in this regard.

Also, if a newly discovered technique is broken, that's not really an issue with the meta not being mature. That's just a balance issue, plain and simple.

 

[Volt-Ikazuchi]

From what I've seen, PM 3.02 got to the point where the cast was getting balanced in a Marvel style.
(Not that I hate Marvel or anything, but balancing isn't really one of its strongest points.)

The problem with Marvel style balancing is that everything has a way to slaughter anything else with an often simple condition.

I'll give you an example. Lucas Offense Up.
(This may not be the best example, but I mostly play Lucas and Samus and didn't have time to properly learn the game yet.)

In 3.02, Offense Up charged extremely quickly and it was very rewarding. Even if the opponent blocked a OU Smash, Lucas could easily buy some time and charge another one. Lucas could do a shield grab into a throw, preferably one that enabled him to do a sweetspotted F-Air or B-Air and instantly charge at least 60% of his charge. At lower percentages.

In 3.5, Offense Up got nerfed. It takes twice the time to charge. It's still good, but now it forces Lucas players to actually learn the rest of the character's tools in order to actually play the character properly instead of doing braindead Dash Attack into UP Smash and KOing quicker than Fox. Partial Charges are also more important now.

As you can see by this quick example, 3.02 OU was a low-risk high-reward move that quickly could shift matches without relying too much on skill. While 3.5 OU has a higher risk, but excellent rewards and requires skill to properly set it up.


Basically, 3.5 was a step in the right direction because instead of buffing everything to give everything a top-tier potential, the developers went for nerfs that toned down everyone's potential and are waiting to see what needs adjustments.
That made the game more flexible and easier to balance with further patches (Which is a good thing, considering that this is not the final release.