How balanced is Project M

[Super Lucario Sunshine]

I find that PM is very balanced and every character can hold his/her/its own, but I still see people trying to categorize them in tiers, or is that based off of results?

 

[Boiko]

Partially.

You can read more about tier list speculation here: http://smashboards.com/threads/tier-list-speculation.331666/

 

[qwertz143]

I find that PM is very balanced and every character can hold his/her/its own, but I still see people trying to categorize them in tiers, or is that based off of results?

Each character is balanced, but it's almost impossible to fully balance out a game with 40+ characters. Yes each character can be equal, but some have advantage over others, leading to matchups being created.

 

[Celestis]

Tiers are inevitable.

 

[Super Lucario Sunshine]

Each character is balanced, but it's almost impossible to fully balance out a game with 40+ characters. Yes each character can be equal, but some have advantage over others, leading to matchups being created.

thank you. And yes, I know about matchups

Tiers are inevitable.

I guess so

 

[Super Lucario Sunshine]

So are the tiers based off of matchups, because that'd make a lot of sense and makes me feel like an idiot for this thread

 

[Farquaad]

So are the tiers based off of matchups, because that'd make a lot of sense and makes me feel like an idiot for this thread

Largely, yeah. If a character has good or even matchups against a lot of higher tier characters, they'll be higher tier typically. It's a lot more complicated than that, but in PM, even the tiers don't matter that much until really high level play. Even then, none of these characters are explored fully, so it feels like the tier list discussion is more of a mental exercise than anything. How do we know if a character really goes even when we're still discovering new tech? It's all very dynamic.

No solid tier list regardless. There are consensus ones, but certain characters have great matchups against consensus "top tiers" but still don't get a ton of love - for example Dedede, who bodies Marth and does really well against spacies. Idk. If you're newish don't worry about tiers too much, hell I still feel like my opinion doesn't hold much weight yet

 

[menotyou135]

So here is the deal. The game is one of the most balanced games in any franchise ever. There are some that beat it, but not many that have the huge 41 character caste.

However, there are characters such as fox that cannot be nerfed to an average level without fundamentally breaking their design. So these characters are left untouched fundamentally, but have certain non-essential elements toned down. No matter how much you nerf fox's frame data, his nair and shine will always give him a huge advantage in neutral when combined with his speed and weight.

Same can be said in reverse. Bowser for example will always have issues with characters that can exploit his lack of speed and how easy it is to combo him. However, if you buff him to where he goes even with these characters, then he now hard counters characters that couldn't exploit his speed. If you make him small to avoid being comboed he stops being bowser. If you give him a frame 1 aerial to get out of combos, then he all of a sudden becomes a character that can approach with the fastest aerial in the game. The only way to fix this built in polarization is to fundamentally change his bait and punish based design. You have to find a way to allow him to deal with the characters that hard counter him without allowing him to just hard counter other characters and without changing his design to where it is unrecognizable from what it was.

Furthermore, a lot of character designs are polarizing; if they weren't then the game would have a bunch of characters that function basically the same and variety would not be present. When you have polarizing elements of gameplay, you end up with some characters that have advantages over others.

The Project M tier list is basically just a list of who has the least polarizing matchup spread. Characters with few or no weak matchups will be at the top along with characters that have many advantageous matchups. Characters with bad matchup spreads will be at the bottom.

For example, despite jigglypuff being one of the best melee characters, and having no changes in project M of note (in fact, rar actually buffs her bair effectiveness) she is ranked near the bottom of most tier lists. This is because while her matchups against melee top tiers aren't bad, most new characters have tools that deal with her well. Specifically, heavy characters are now viable so she falls victim to crouch canceling, there are more characters with good projectiles so she gets camped, and more characters have disjoints that are longer ranged than hers. Combine this with the fact that most new characters can get a free kill off a missed rest below 50% and the fact that fewer characters can be easily comboed into rest due to their floatiness and you can see why her effectiveness has fallen despite being almost identical to before.

She is a character that would have been lower tier in melee had the low tiers had better frame data and moves. She was decent because the top tiers minus fox did not have good answers to her abilities. This was the main reason she was looked at as such a gimmick for such a long time.

More or less, even the worst characters in PM are on par with the samuses and pikachus of melee. Some would argue they are even higher than that. Basically every character can win a national. HBox has won several PM events utilizing jigglypuff even when she was rated as the worst character in the game.

 

[Phaiyte]

words

I can't even believe how full of **** this whole post really is

 

[Bleck]

more than melee

 

[Poccoishere]

I can't even believe how full of **** this whole post really is

In what way? They made many points what of these points were "full of ****?"

 

[MLGF]

...He said the things that literally EVERYONE says about this game. :/

 

[menotyou135]

I can't even believe how full of **** this whole post really is

Please elaborate. I am curious what exactly you find wrong with it.

 

[Mc.Rad]

How many of these threads is there?!?!? They just keep popping up!

(Also I may as well put my two cents here and say that PM is pretty well balanced even in its new form. We can't tell if this may stay until the last update but it's more balanced than Melee in my eyes.)

 

[MegaMissingno]

puff buffs when

 

[Mc.Rad]

puff buffs when

Never (Or at least until Melee s tiers turn into ****)

 

[MegaMissingno]

Well in Puff's case that has already happened, so

 

[Super Lucario Sunshine]

Well in Puff's case that has already happened, so

bow to the puff buff

 

[DMG]

Puff is one of the hardest characters to accurately rank, cause Melee there's mostly Hbox and PM there's... Hbox whenever he enters lol. So on top of figuring out what Puff's MU spread actually looks like against new character designs and buffed Melee foes (and crazy stage variety), you have a legit lack of representation from her outside of 1 guy.

Judging chars in PM, with patch fluctuations and some chars not having enough "strong" mains, it's a nightmare. People have gut feelings, but can't essentially prove them or display them to others accurately.

Balance is probably worse in PM than most people understand or want to admit. I've legit heard people argue that PM is so balanced, there's either:

A. ZERO MU's that are worse than 6:4

B. Only a handful of MU's worse than 6:4 / only a couple at 65:35


Please don't be one of those people folks, it's just wrong.

 

[menotyou135]

Puff is one of the hardest characters to accurately rank, cause Melee there's mostly Hbox and PM there's... Hbox whenever he enters lol. So on top of figuring out what Puff's MU spread actually looks like against new character designs and buffed Melee foes (and crazy stage variety), you have a legit lack of representation from her outside of 1 guy.

You are definitely right that her exact placement in balance is quite unclear that the moment.

However, I feel like a lack of representation is kind of a sign that the character isn't good. Hbox himself has said on multiple occasions that she sucks in PM and has used other characters in her stead (granted that was earlier versions but she hasn't exactly got changes). And you are forgetting that Darc is one of the most notable PM players and he dropped puff when he got on PM. He was probably the 2nd or 3rd major puff main in melee for a good stretch.

Anybody can tell that puff has a lot of weak matchups with new characters. You don't need to be Hbox to tell that she is below where she needs to be. To rank her accurately? Perhaps, but even a rough estimate is well below where she should be in a "balanced" game.

A more extreme example would be saying "There are no top kirby players in melee so we can't tell that she is actually bad for sure." Again, extreme example, but the point is that you can tell that there are bad characters even if there aren't top players using them. In fact, that usually indicates that they are low tier characters.

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

More balanced than cornflakes.

Needs more sodium.

---

In one regard we have good balance: Each character does have *strengths*. I don't really get a Melee-Ganon level of feeling helpless from any character, which is good.

On the flipside, I finally understand what Armada said all those versions ago about the punish game in PM being crap. No one besides maybe Fox mains fully understands how to optimally press the advantage against every possible opponent off a grab, off a hit, off positional advantage. [And Fox mains only sort of get this dubious honor because Fox punishes tend to play out the same way, because of his movement, lasers, shine and vertical KO-centric finishers, while other characters have more precarious setups or need to have a good read and/or edgeguard thrown in when closing stock.]

This makes thinking about the game a lot harder. You *want* to say MK beats Marth ... He's made of recovery moves! Marth's recovery is so linear and MK has all these tools to get back to stage, plus Bair, Nair, Dair ... an offstage Marth v/s MK should be a dead Marth. MK has good ground speed, DD, pokes ... range is a slight issue but with good spacing MK should be going toe-to-toe with Marth on footsies and absolutely murdering him, boxing him into corners, putting him offstage where there's no hope of returning.

But then you watch something like Lunchables v/s Strong Bad and you see just how much Marth gets off a Uthrow. Just how hard it is for MK to escape Marth's juggles without giving up hella stage control. Just how badly Marth intercepts MK's recovery options and how Marth really only needs Bair and sidesmash to make MK's job getting back on stage an actual hell. How MK and Marth's grab range matter more than their sword range, especially when Marth's Uthrow starts a juggle that can completely eviscerate Meta Knight, while MK has a really hard time starting his own juggles on Marth. Which means MK is forced to tech chase Marth more, make more guesses, risk resetting to neutral more ... a neutral where he doesn't have a strict advantage and Uthrow -> Juggle -> Ken is a scary reality.

Basically, the answer to your questions is "**** knows". If you take the generally-agreed upon top 20 in the game, I think we have something amazing balance wise. But who can really say?

 

[Victor Marczyk]

You can basically use random and whoever the game chooses could be a balanced potential main, basically