Here is my proposal

[Viceversa96]

Forget the PAL and Umbreon changes instead try these much better changes.
Brawl Up smash damage and knockback which doesn't kill as early.
Brawl Up air knockback and damage which is weaker.
Brawl shine which doesn't come out as fast. I believe it comes out in 4 frames instead (still fast).
Brawl lasers which only do 1 percent and travel half the distance of FD.

 

[Nemiak temp]

Just keep the ****ing Spacies as they are Jesus christ. They have 12 years of Meta behind them, changes like these will upset 3/4 of the community and not only the melee purists. LOLOLOL LEARN THE MATCHUP. (Kidding) But in all seriousness ******** about spacies does no good. ****ing STOP. They have an incredibly high technical barrier and are extremely fun to play once you've mastered the tech. Why change them? If up-smash was weaker people would still complain! (OH NO FOX HAS TO DRILL-SHINE TWO EXTRA TIMES BEFORE UP-SMASH KILLS). Same with the up-air change. The shine change is stupid. So are the lasers.

 

[Nemiak temp]

(And now I wait for all nine thousand of you moronic Fox haters. Frame one no fair boo!)

 

[Viceversa96]

(And now I wait for all nine thousand of you moronic Fox haters. Frame one no fair boo!)

I main Fox... but they are changing him regardless I heard

 

[foxygrandpa]

to take the brawl shine would be so stupid, and completely mess up all of the combos and there whole shine game in general. I can fight spacies pretty well at the moment and I dont really think they need to be nerfed, but if there was a change, I wouldnt mind having different knockback on the upsmash or having shortened laser lengths. If any changes to them are are put in though, I think it would be fair to put back the shine invincibility.

 

[Deleted member]

Forget the PAL and Umbreon changes instead try these much better changes.
Brawl Up smash damage and knockback which doesn't kill as early.
Brawl Up air knockback and damage which is weaker.
Brawl shine which doesn't come out as fast. I believe it comes out in 4 frames instead (still fast).
Brawl lasers which only do 1 percent and travel half the distance of FD.

i already said to do brawl style lasers.

brawl upsmash is going to do nothing about fox's general viability. the whole idea is to make the character less omnipotent from neutral, upsmash is only a punishment once you have position so hurting upsmash doesn't solve the problem at all.

make fox's initial dash worse and give him brawl lasers, it solves the neutral problem without fundamentally altering the character.

/solved

 

[Spiffykins]

I don't agree. Omnipotent neutral + lower kill power is one way to balance. Less potent neutral + superman strength killpower is another. They both matter. Slight changes to both is likely the best way to keep the fundamental character intact.

 

[Viceversa96]

I actually think lower knockback moves will make him more broken since he'll be able to combo even easier. So maybe his moves should just have less hitstun. To make it harder to combo along with the laser and PAL changes.

 

[GMaster171]

hitstun is part of knockback, you cant reduce one without reducing the other.

 

[Viceversa96]

hitstun is part of knockback, you cant reduce one without reducing the other.

Damage nerf then? I think nerfing Fox is going to be hard tbh. We can't ruin the fundamental design of the character so you have to be careful.

 

[GMaster171]

Damage nerf doesn't do much other than extend the window where you're hoping he messes up. Reducing his damage only makes him need to "be Fox" for another 2 or 3 hits, which doesn't fix the underlying problem of his poor design.

 

[Viceversa96]

Damage nerf doesn't do much other than extend the window where you're hoping he messes up. Reducing his damage only makes him need to "be Fox" for another 2 or 3 hits, which doesn't fix the underlying problem of his poor design.

Do you think they need to redesign him? Idk at this point because I agree with pretty much what you and Umbreon said.

 

[Nemiak temp]

How is Fox designed poorly? He's been given all of the tools he needs to succeed at high level play using any playstyle he wants. If you ask me that's how every character should be. Sure frame one cancelable moves on the entire cast would get ridiculous FAST but why are we discussing NERFS? It makes absolutely no sense to me that so many people (especially in the P:M community) are so anti Fox/Falco. Even if this game were as balanced as possible there would still be a "TOP" tier of anywhere from 1 to maybe 5 characters that simply have an advantage over the others. Why are we trying SO hard to knock Fox and Falco off their thrones?

 

[Deleted member]

Damage nerf doesn't do much other than extend the window where you're hoping he messes up. Reducing his damage only makes him need to "be Fox" for another 2 or 3 hits, which doesn't fix the underlying problem of his poor design.

nailed it / 10

edit: succeeding at high level play with any playstyle you want is absolutely a red flag for poor design lmao

 

[~Frozen~]

How is Fox designed poorly? He's been given all of the tools he needs to succeed at high level play using any playstyle he wants. If you ask me that's how every character should be. Sure frame one cancelable moves on the entire cast would get ridiculous FAST but why are we discussing NERFS? It makes absolutely no sense to me that so many people (especially in the P:M community) are so anti Fox/Falco. Even if this game were as balanced as possible there would still be a "TOP" tier of anywhere from 1 to maybe 5 characters that simply have an advantage over the others. Why are we trying SO hard to knock Fox and Falco off their thrones?

Even if Fox was balanced in a way that Umbreon mentioned, I HIGHLY doubt he'll drop from being the best character in the game. At worst he'll be top 3 or so.

The goal isn't to remove spacies from being the best characters in the game, it's designing them in a way that isn't wrong. They can remain the best, but they should be more in-line with the rest of the cast imo

 

[Deleted member]

yeah not to be a douche but i pretty much nailed the problem and gave a solution in 1 paragraph. i'd like to see what the PMBR does though.

 

[Nemiak temp]

nailed it / 10

edit: succeeding at high level play with any playstyle you want is absolutely a red flag for poor design lmao

Why? Wtf? We want every high level fox to look Identical? Every high level falcon to look identical? Every high level Marth to look identical? (See what I'm getting at?) That doesn't make much sense to me. Obviously some characters have to play a certain way in order to be successful by why should we be forcing this onto the spacies? Ex: Marth has to play a very grounded, patient, read/punish heavy game to be successful at a high level. Fox can play a DD campy grounded game with hard reads and punishes (baiting up throw up airs/upsmashing) OR he can go balls deep aggro combo city. This puts Fox and Falco at a level above a lot of the cast but WHY is this bad? Balance? There a lot of characters capable of dealing with the spacies without too much of a problem. Some characters get absolutely wrecked by spacies. With a 36 character cast there is bound to be some terrible match-ups sprinkled throughout the roster. Time to start working on some counter picks for the tough ones maybe? There will NEVER be a day where we have 50-50 Match-ups across a roster?

 

[Deleted member]

we do actually want them to look identical because it means we've forced the players to optimize their respective characters to win. being able to win 5 different ways is an excellent early indicator that your character does not have to be played optimally or even good to win. it shows very clearly that the character is poorly balanced relative to the rest of the cast.

it's not about MUs, it's about going against the cast at large. variations will always exist for MUs because the methods of interactions change and thats fine.

 

[Nemiak temp]

I don't know how I feel about that. Does not have to be played optimally? I dont really understand what that means. What is the difference between outplaying someone and outplaying someone (as fox)? (Winning one way with a top tier character as opposed to winning with the same character but playing a completely different way or "style") In the end the winner still made the "optimal" decisions, no?

 

[Deleted member]

I don't know how I feel about that. Does not have to be played optimally? I dont really understand what that means. What is the difference between outplaying someone and outplaying someone (as fox)? (Winning one way with a top tier character as opposed to winning with the same character but playing a completely different way or "style") In the end the winner still made the "optimal" decisions, no?

no, and that's the obvious issue with the statement. if you can win via laser camping or nairspam or whatever your strategy is, as well as several others, it actually means that what you were doing didn't really matter because it was all conducive to winning anyway. if you can either nair or grab and they're as good as the other, the only time 2 options should be interchangeable in terms of relative goodness is when the consequences don't matter. aka the decisions you make don't matter. aka the character doesn't have to make decisions. and that sir is a flawed character.

 

[Juushichi]

Changing these things doesn't mean that all of a sudden DK, GnW, Zelda, etc, etc will make these MU's "50-50" and it's disingenuous at best to think that, nemiak.

What it does however mean is that Fox might have a few of the same weaknesses as say... Pikachu (who mostly kinda does the same thing?), without just being innately better for no particular reason outside of "becuz meree".

edit: succeeding at high level play with any playstyle you want is absolutely a red flag for poor design lmao

To add to this (@ nemiak):

Imagine you're playing Street Fighter (a harder lined game, sure) and you're playing against Dhalsim. Dhalsim is a zoning character who really really sucks up close. His objective is to poke and zone you and make sure you don't get in. In later games, he received a teleport in order to help alleviate some of this pressure (still kinda laggy).

Now imagine if Dhalsim had his pretty good zoning game (his core design), but also had high damage potential and an ambiguous as hell knockdown vortex. His "weakness" is that he has low health and low stun... but look at all the tools he now has in order for this not to happen. (Actually for a long time, this character was real and his name is Seth, lol). No top player particularly thinks that Seth is a well designed character or fun to deal with. That's why he is also getting nerfed in USF4.

 

[Nguz95]

hitstun is part of knockback, you cant reduce one without reducing the other.

Quick thing here: hitstun is actually a composite of damage and knockback. You can change one without changing the other too much, but it's a pain in the butt.

Now for my thougts. Fox is too strong; however, I don't give a crap. Just leave him how he is.

 

[GMaster171]

Hitstun is only effected by knockback (it is a flat out multiplier), so the only way to change how much hitstun Fox has is to decrease his knockback or make everyone else heavier... Neither of which are good solutions.

 

[Nemiak temp]

That's not a very good comparison at all Juu but I see what you are trying to say. I understand how good Fox is and how silly certain things about him are. But I don't think his design should be reconsidered. He's really ****ing good and there’s no way to change that without changing the core of how he is played, which should NOT be done. He should just be left the way he is.

 

[foxygrandpa]

How is fox poorly designed? He's got so many years of metagame behind him, changing the core design of his playstyle would mean pissing off all of the melee community, and the people that have worked since 2001 to master his fundamentals. Im not saying nerfing him is a bad idea, but the basic playstyle should be the same. I think less knockback on the upsmash would be good, without being unfair. Also, I think that possibly increasing the amount of hits that his upair has would make it harder for him to kill with upthrow because it would be easier to SDI. Maybe a slightly larger startup on side b would be helpful too, or a smaller hitbox on foxes up b. If people learned to capitalize on foxes recovery better (which most characters don't have to hard of a time with in this game) then fox would be easier to fight overall.
The top tiers of the melee cast were all capable of gimping fox easy, which made them viable options for fighting him. If we just slightly nerfed foxes recovery timing, instead of his awesome technical offensive play style, fighting him would be a lot easier for most of the cast, especially since most characters have good gimping tools.

 

[Nemiak temp]

^ I Actually REALLY like the idea of his Up-Air having more hits. I see the logic behind making his recovery easier to gimp but honestly its already pretty easy with most of the cast. Smaller hitbox on the up-B wouldn't be a bad idea though. OR make his up throw have higher knockback growth (if that's possible) so that after a certain percent up-throw up-air wouldn't be guaranteed and the fox would be forced to read the opponents DI

 

[foxygrandpa]

^ I Actually REALLY like the idea of his Up-Air having more hits. I see the logic behind making his recovery easier to gimp but honestly its already pretty easy with most of the cast. Smaller hitbox on the up-B wouldn't be a bad idea though. OR make his up throw have higher knockback growth (if that's possible) so that after a certain percent up-throw up-air wouldn't be guaranteed and the fox would be forced to read the opponents DI

Even though his current recovery is easy to gimp, a lot of people who play newer characters dont realize that. Besides, a skilled fox player would be able to compensate for poor recovery with an awesome stage/combo game.
And Im glad you like the idea. Its becoming increasingly difficult to find people who don't want fox to suck.

 

[foxygrandpa]

^ I Actually REALLY like the idea of his Up-Air having more hits. I see the logic behind making his recovery easier to gimp but honeAlstly its already pretty easy with most of the cast. Smaller hitbox on the up-B wouldn't be a bad idea though. OR make his up throw have higher knockback growth (if that's possible) so that after a certain percent up-throw up-air wouldn't be guaranteed and the fox would be forced to read the opponents DI

Also, I dont think that we should be touching fox's throws, but rather the options out of it. If we altered the throw too much, its possible that fox wouldn't do as well against other fast fallers like falco, cfalcon, and wolf because of the upthrow upsmash combo being gone.

 

[Deco-Nii]

u. mad fox haters?

 

[regal68]

Also, I dont think that we should be touching fox's throws, but rather the options out of it. If we altered the throw too much, its possible that fox wouldn't do as well against other fast fallers like falco, cfalcon, and wolf because of the upthrow upsmash combo being gone.

Lmao at the travesty of Fox not being able to **** on CF and 0>death his spacie friends with a CG