How do "Advanced Techniques" or "Game Physics" affect casual players?

[Tien2500]

It's really not that complex. I'll use my personal experience as an example.

I played Melee. A lot of melee. But at the time I played I never really looked online to learn ATs or anything like that. By the time I fought people who did that sort of thing it was several years into the metagame. When I saw people wavedashing and L-canceling shffling and w/e, it was honestly just discouraging. I didn't even feel like I was playing the same game as them. I felt so far behind that a) it felt pointless to try to catch up and b) the game experienced gamers were playing didn't seem fun to me.

Fast forward to Brawl. I like Brawl a lot more. I've gotten spanked pretty hard by some people, but even when I'm clearly outclassed, I never feel completely hopeless. I feel like if I learn a bit more, work on the matchups, and practice a bit, I can win, or at least be competitive. The top players are not so far out of my league that I can't learn from them, and I don't feel like I'll have to spend hours and hours practicing.

On the other hand, we have Marvel vs Capcom 3. I'm not amazing at the game, but I'm far FAR above the average player. The game has been a constant fixture at our break room at work, and only three or so people will actually play against me. It's simply frustrating for the rest to be helplessly juggled through the air for half ten seconds, to have every one of their approaches completely countered, and to be utterly confused by mix ups. I try playing random to mix it up, but it's still just not very enjoyable for them.

There is a definite link to how enjoyable a game is to a broad audience and how tech heavy it is. Between the people that will play at tournaments and the people who will mash buttons and play with items, there is a large group of people who wants to play, and wants to have competitive matches, but isn't going to invest the time to be a truly great player. For those players, tech skill is going to be detrimental for their enjoyment of the game. Seeing players that are so far above them that they can't even begin to figure out how to learn from them is discouraging.

IF these players never encounter a player that can use ATs or w/e, that's one thing, but, especially with a hopefully strengthened online mode, it will happen.

Of course, you can fall back on the good ol' "get better" argument, but that's ultimately a choice left to the developers. You can make a niche sort of franchise like Guilty Gear that focuses on ATs and such and demands a high level of knowledge and skill, and there is nothing wrong with that. Smash is designed to have a broader appeal, and keeping the game simpler is a part of that design.

 

[BSP]

Sakurai discussing the customization aspects of the game in tandem with the Wii U and 3DS versions:
“We’re planning for a level of customization to some degree and in some form,” Sakurai acknowledged. “It’s not completely decided at this point. But it’s very important to point out that we do this in a careful way that doesn’t affect the strength and balance of the characters. One thing we’d like to do is to be able to customize the direction of attacks. But not give characters a stronger jump or a stronger or weaker attack. You can consider customizations like that possible.”

-snip-

Ok, but I'm fairly certain that Sakurai considers his balancing around 4 player matches with items on, not 1 v 1 matches, our norm, where each character's traits will be directly matched against another's without any interference. That's all he talks about whenever he mentions the game: 4 player. Balancing in a FFA + items probably won't do much for the 1 v 1 aspects, so IDK if you can say this was aimed at the competitive community.

Sakurai discussing the implementation of an online service for Smash:
“We don’t want to have a type of situation where you have a ranking pyramid, and only the people at the very top can enjoy it. I think there are other unique ways to be able to implement a system where people can get satisfaction out of performing at a skill level relative to their peer group.”


-snip-

OK, but this still doesn't scream "ATs in!" to me. He can set the bar as low as he wants and there would still be skill gaps, and he'd still be able to implement a system where people could play with others close in skill.

Sakurai discussing the differences of Melee and Brawl, and the reasons behind their differing philosophies, as well as their plans for the next Smash Bros. games direction:
“Quite simply Melee was something that was targeted more towards hardcore, advanced players,” Sakurai told me, when I asked him to characterize his new games. “With Wii, on a platform where you were getting experiences like Wii Fit and there was an audience that tilted slightly more towards beginning players, we slowed down the gameplay. This time around, we don’t see a situation where we’ll be encountering as many beginning players, and so as far as the speed and the feel of the game, I think you could say confidently that we’re targeting something right in between those two versions.”

You need to keep in mind that 'advanced techniques' is just a term coined by competitive smashers to describe certain arbitrary game tools, and this conversation can get complicated by semantics alone. It's not this clearly defined set of aspects, and many of these techniques can be character specific along with being globally applicable.

Yeah, we don't have a clear agreement on what exactly is an AT. I personally consider it anything that isn't explained in either the game manual or the how to play screen, since I would call those elements the "basics". If Sakurai clearly makes including ATs or whatever mechanics he wants to make the game faster as part of his direction, so be it.

I don't believe Sakurai intentions were "we're going to remove advanced techniques from Smash" during Brawls development. Instead he worked to remove layers of the game that a player would have to learn in order for a player to get up to speed to compete with peers who are better than them. Removing what we call advanced techniques from the game was secondary consequence of this overall philosophy.

Alright.

Sakurai isn't just looking to speed the game up, he's look to refine the feel of the game as well. And you need to keep in mind that it wasn't just the gravity and fast fall values that made players move quickly, it was was also through utilizing what techniques your character could do, be it 'advanced' or not. Brawl was largely slow because along with having a very slow moving engine, there were little options to exploit or abuse. If Sakurai wants to up the ante, then inevitably there are going to be inclusions of things to learn and explore for players like us on these forums that we will likely deem 'AT's.'

Alrighty. Can you link me to the article you're citing?

Ok, you're blatantly cherry picking Sakurai's words just for the sake of your argument.

In that same interview he also said how he appreciates competitive smash and even sympathises with us by mentioning his SF2 days. Nowhere does he say he doesn't care about that aspect so I don't know how you came up with that.

He must not care very deeply because he specifically says that he mostly doesn't incorporate feedback from high level players. If he cared for the competitive community, why wouldn't he listen to everything they say? He does say he appreciates high level play, but he also wants to avoid smash turning into a situation in which the game is only appreciated by a small group of players. I see this as Overswarm put it: we exist, but we're not a priority, and ATs or faster mechanics or whatever seem like things that would cater to us only.

Why would he even say he's looking for a balance between Melee and Brawl's speed AND game feel if he didn't care? Why even bring it up? Who do you think he's even directing that statement towards? Not the casuals because it makes no difference to them, obviously. It's for the competitive community to give them hope Sakurai does listen to feedback.

-nvm, found it-

First Q: Well, if Sakurai's trying to give us a perspective on how fast the game will be, Melee and Brawl are good references since they're on extremes. That doesn't say much about ATs, but as I said, I didn't know he commented on "game feel".
Second: Because he wants to let us know how fast the game will be.
Third: Everyone who plays Smash, not just the competitive crowd. Everyone who's played smash will most likely remember what each game felt like.

We already know Sakurai listens to feedback. Why else would he have removed tripping?

If Sakurai does this:

So... the easiest solution to this thread's problem is simply to give a good tutorial, and expose players to complicated techniques.

What would you all think if they dug a tutorial into the story mode?

In some way (maybe not story mode. Each smash has a how to play video) that explains everything the player can do, I wouldn't care how many ATs he puts in, because that's clearly the direction he wants to go in. Right now, I'm not convinced that he wants to go in that direction, so I don't see the point putting anything "advanced"/outside of the manual/tutorial in the game. Considering that Sakurai mostly focuses on 4 player FFAs anyway, and he says things like this:

Essentially, the incorporation of the Smash Balls and the Final Smash was something to accommodate, or to counter a situation where in a game you'd have a strong player and without those things, you would have a situation where clearly always the strong players would come on top. And so we wanted to add a little bit of some accidental or random elements to help sort of narrow the possibility of who would come out on top in a match. And so our opinion on it was that it sort of helps balance the game. Of course, hardcore players might take issue with it, so that's why we decided to make it an option you can turn on or off.

http://kotaku.com/an-in-depth-chat-with-the-genius-behind-super-smash-bro-530744390

I'm not convinced that's the direction he wants to go in.

 

[Big-Cat]

There is a definite link to how enjoyable a game is to a broad audience and how tech heavy it is.

I think it matters more as to WHERE in the learning curve is the tech heavy aspect present. Street Fighter 4 is needlessly tech heavy when it comes to combos, even for some BnB combos that beginner players need to learn. Meanwhile, games like Smash and Tekken are not so tech heavy at the beginner level. The basic controls in Smash are simple enough to chew the fat with friends. Tekken is similar in this regard with the button mashing aspect as seen in certain characters. However, both Smash and Tekken become progressively more tech heavy as the inputs become more and more deliberate and complex with things like DI in Smash and mid-low mixups in Tekken.

With the case of Marvel, your inputs are more or less deliberate from the get go. Despite this, most characters can fall back on a LMH > MMHS > OTG > Super combo for beginners to use. Still, at least the combos are predominantly chain based.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

It's really not that complex. I'll use my personal experience as an example.

I played Melee. A lot of melee. But at the time I played I never really looked online to learn ATs or anything like that. By the time I fought people who did that sort of thing it was several years into the metagame. When I saw people wavedashing and L-canceling shffling and w/e, it was honestly just discouraging. I didn't even feel like I was playing the same game as them. I felt so far behind that a) it felt pointless to try to catch up and b) the game experienced gamers were playing didn't seem fun to me.

Fast forward to Brawl. I like Brawl a lot more. I've gotten spanked pretty hard by some people, but even when I'm clearly outclassed, I never feel completely hopeless. I feel like if I learn a bit more, work on the matchups, and practice a bit, I can win, or at least be competitive. The top players are not so far out of my league that I can't learn from them, and I don't feel like I'll have to spend hours and hours practicing.

On the other hand, we have Marvel vs Capcom 3. I'm not amazing at the game, but I'm far FAR above the average player. The game has been a constant fixture at our break room at work, and only three or so people will actually play against me. It's simply frustrating for the rest to be helplessly juggled through the air for half ten seconds, to have every one of their approaches completely countered, and to be utterly confused by mix ups. I try playing random to mix it up, but it's still just not very enjoyable for them.

There is a definite link to how enjoyable a game is to a broad audience and how tech heavy it is. Between the people that will play at tournaments and the people who will mash buttons and play with items, there is a large group of people who wants to play, and wants to have competitive matches, but isn't going to invest the time to be a truly great player. For those players, tech skill is going to be detrimental for their enjoyment of the game. Seeing players that are so far above them that they can't even begin to figure out how to learn from them is discouraging.

IF these players never encounter a player that can use ATs or w/e, that's one thing, but, especially with a hopefully strengthened online mode, it will happen.

Of course, you can fall back on the good ol' "get better" argument, but that's ultimately a choice left to the developers. You can make a niche sort of franchise like Guilty Gear that focuses on ATs and such and demands a high level of knowledge and skill, and there is nothing wrong with that. Smash is designed to have a broader appeal, and keeping the game simpler is a part of that design.

You do raise a good point, especially with Marvel vs Capcom. On the other hand, I do feel that players would be more well prepared if understood the underlying mechanics of the game that lead a player to success. For example, being able to finish off a series of hit into a potential finisher is as simple as knowing the existence of super canceling. Even though Marvel vs Capcom 3 had things to help players understand more complex playing (The mission mode comes to mind) It didn't explain WHEN to do such a cancel. While I can see that these games are merely respecting basic human intelligence, they don't do so in a way where the player is engaged. Maybe they can disguise canceling in something that is visibly possible, like canceling a shoryuken into another uppercut super as to imitate an organic movement. When explaining buffering inputs from one move they can call it a "2 in 1 attack". Exploring different teaching methods ensures success.

I know from personal experience that I learn visually. I learned how to skate backwards by watching a character from Jet Grind Radio skate backwards. I learned how to wavedash, l-cancel, and shuffle in Melee with the "How 2 Hax in SSBM" video I posted earlier in the thread. It's brilliant as it shows the hand movements in the upper right of the video as the character is doing the action, and in addition to that explains them in a hilarious manner that is actually more helpful than one might think.

In the case for Marvel, If you understand the mechanics of Capcom fighters the knowledge simply translates over, but it also alienates a player base. At the same time Street Fighter is commonly played among casual players because it's simple premise and intuitive attack system with moves that can be done by themselves, or target combos that can be done just by pressing buttons in a certain order. Imitating this level of depth is both the most simple and most difficult phase in game development in my opinion.

 

[Big-Cat]

The target combos reminds me of how to explain things like special and super canceling. They're the same concept except one is not mentioned in a command list.

 

[Tien2500]

I think it matters more as to WHERE in the learning curve is the tech heavy aspect present. Street Fighter 4 is needlessly tech heavy when it comes to combos, even for some BnB combos that beginner players need to learn. Meanwhile, games like Smash and Tekken are not so tech heavy at the beginner level. The basic controls in Smash are simple enough to chew the fat with friends. Tekken is similar in this regard with the button mashing aspect as seen in certain characters. However, both Smash and Tekken become progressively more tech heavy as the inputs become more and more deliberate and complex with things like DI in Smash and mid-low mixups in Tekken.

With the case of Marvel, your inputs are more or less deliberate from the get go. Despite this, most characters can fall back on a LMH > MMHS > OTG > Super combo for beginners to use. Still, at least the combos are predominantly chain based.

That's sort of right, although I disagree with some things. While Street Fighter 4 requires a ridiculous amount of precision for certain things, you can get by in that game, even at mid level play, with simpler 3-4 hit combos and a good sense of timing and spacing, particularly if you're using less combo based characters like Bison. In Marvel 3, if you can't pull off a reasonable length string to a super combo, you will be completely hopeless. The combos aren't exceedingly tough but they LOOK very intimidating to players who are newer to fighting games.

That's another part of the puzzle. How complicated the game LOOKS is also really important. Marvel 3 isn't actually THAT tech heavy until you get to very high level of play, but it LOOKS very intimidating. In the same way, Melee with ATs LOOKS very intimidating. I was never that great at Melee, so I don't know if it actually is that tough to use ATs effectively, but from an outsiders perspective, it's enough to scare people off.

 

[Ulevo]

It's really not that complex. I'll use my personal experience as an example.

I played Melee. A lot of melee. But at the time I played I never really looked online to learn ATs or anything like that. By the time I fought people who did that sort of thing it was several years into the metagame. When I saw people wavedashing and L-canceling shffling and w/e, it was honestly just discouraging. I didn't even feel like I was playing the same game as them. I felt so far behind that a) it felt pointless to try to catch up and b) the game experienced gamers were playing didn't seem fun to me.

Fast forward to Brawl. I like Brawl a lot more. I've gotten spanked pretty hard by some people, but even when I'm clearly outclassed, I never feel completely hopeless. I feel like if I learn a bit more, work on the matchups, and practice a bit, I can win, or at least be competitive. The top players are not so far out of my league that I can't learn from them, and I don't feel like I'll have to spend hours and hours practicing.

Honestly? The bolded part is kind of a shame. And this is where the casual vs competitive context comes in.

As a casual player, you can enjoy Melee just as much as you would Brawl. In this situation, the only time you felt discouraged was when you were exposed to player simply better than you, and the reason for this is simple. Melee rewards skill more than Brawl does. Brawl on a whole is simple, and even if you are significantly smarter, or significantly more experience, or have more practiced hand coordination, those assets mean significantly less. You as a player are not rewarded for your achievements or personal credentials of the game.

That is saddening from a competitive stand point. And the thing is, you never experienced this until you were exposed to competitive players. Sure, maybe they weren't tourney goers. I don't know. But they were competitive by spirit. This is not the games problem. This is a mix between your unwillingness to adapt to your surroundings, and the lack of consideration better players have for easing you in to their social group.

What makes this worse is that maybe in a game like Street Fighter, or Guilty Gear, or Mortal Kombat, or Tekken, you might have to strip the game of its complexities to solve the learning curve issue you experienced. But Smash? Smash has accessibility in a fighting game like nothing ever before. There's nothing that even comes close, and dumbing it doubt to appeal to people who simply don't want to learn to beat better people comes at the cost of detracting the experience for those more skilled players while doing nothing to significantly improve your dilemma when amongst friends of relative skill. The only thing it will do is ensure you get your ass ***** less by better players, but why does this really matter? If they're better, and you're not willing to put in the work, you shouldn't be playing them anyway. Especially if it frustrates. If you're not a competitive player, you also shouldn't be expecting to beat them. And if you stumble upon someone who gives you a trashing, no big deal. Just go back to your compatriots your comfortable with.

On the other hand, we have Marvel vs Capcom 3. I'm not amazing at the game, but I'm far FAR above the average player. The game has been a constant fixture at our break room at work, and only three or so people will actually play against me. It's simply frustrating for the rest to be helplessly juggled through the air for half ten seconds, to have every one of their approaches completely countered, and to be utterly confused by mix ups. I try playing random to mix it up, but it's still just not very enjoyable for them.

There is a definite link to how enjoyable a game is to a broad audience and how tech heavy it is. Between the people that will play at tournaments and the people who will mash buttons and play with items, there is a large group of people who wants to play, and wants to have competitive matches, but isn't going to invest the time to be a truly great player. For those players, tech skill is going to be detrimental for their enjoyment of the game. Seeing players that are so far above them that they can't even begin to figure out how to learn from them is discouraging.

IF these players never encounter a player that can use ATs or w/e, that's one thing, but, especially with a hopefully strengthened online mode, it will happen.

Of course, you can fall back on the good ol' "get better" argument, but that's ultimately a choice left to the developers. You can make a niche sort of franchise like Guilty Gear that focuses on ATs and such and demands a high level of knowledge and skill, and there is nothing wrong with that. Smash is designed to have a broader appeal, and keeping the game simpler is a part of that design.

The difference between franchises like Guilty Gear and a franchise like Smash is it has appeal to both extremes in its audience. Guilty Gear does not. Casual Guilty Gear players don't exist. I'm not a Marvel player myself, but it's close enough to most fighters that it falls under the same parameters for required skill. If you can't keep up, then it's just not for you. Smash can be, but dragging down the players who are leagues above you because they earned it is not the correct approach.

 

[Jack Kieser]

I never figured you an apologist, trying to downplay how loathed tripping is. look no further than reddit, which is populated by mostly casual players. What your essentially doing is a copy and paste of sakurai's silent majority argument. Tripping has literally never been talked about in a positive light, no one brings it up outside of brawl bashing, but you insist that there are a bunch of players who find it to be a compelling feature but don't feel compelled to defend it. Works just as well for superman64. And for the record, I like posts that present good arguments weather or not I agree, or that make me laugh.

First of all, right in the middle of your paragraph you're already wrong. "Compelling"? I never even went that far, and I could have because I've played with people who think tripping is hilarious. No, I never even said that: I said that they don't care. You know, there's more than just "love" and "hate". One can simply have no opinion. And, most people just don't care. They don't. This isn't Sakurai's silent majority. This is simply people having other **** to do. This is people buying Brawl because it's a party game made by Nintendo on a system that was (at the time) being starved for good games. Why would we assume they care again? Because we do? Because the Internet, the thing that can find something to hate in a puppy video, said so? Unlike Sakurai, I'm not claiming that most people hate or like something; I'm assuming that, like in EVERYTHING else, most people just don't give a ****. If they DID, they'd do something about it. If they DID, they'd be complaining; if anything, we'd see more people complaining, not less. I'm not going to assume that people love OR hate tripping. I'm going to assume that they have mortgages, work, children, school, and the economy to care about and don't give a flying god damn about it either way.

And, if that's the case, who cares?

Probably will.

Good.

Dont set me up as someone who demands arbitrary difficulty for the sake of making this argument easier on you. Smash bros is a game that gives the player absolute control. With so much control, it's a given that some players will be limited my their coordination. I'm against needlessly over complicating inputs, as long as we preserve depth. The removal of l cancel made smash more simple, it's too bad that we also lost a lot strategic elements as a result. Let me ask, what was gained? brawl doesn't enjoy a partcularly big or active tourney scene.

What strategic elements did we lose because of L-cancelling? None, that's what. There was no strategy to it; there was literally NEVER a time when you could have gotten half lag and would ever say to yourself "you know what? I think I want to take the lag this time, I'm not going to L-cancel". There was no strategy to it, that's the point. It was only an extra button press tacked on to ever time you were in the air attacking. That's stupid for Smash. Marvel or SSF4? Maybe a good idea, they're testing ridiculous dexterity in those games. But not Smash.

Your absolutely right, Nintendo should've instituted matchmaking here as well, hopefully they'll rectify this mistake for smash 4.

Um, since when did I say that? Sakurai even said he doesn't want to do that. All I said was that you agreed with me that the OP is wrong that our ATs don't affect casuals. Which they do. Which you admitted to. So, yay.

 

[Tien2500]

You do raise a good point, especially with Marvel vs Capcom. On the other hand, I do feel that players would be more well prepared if understood the underlying mechanics of the game that lead a player to success. For example, being able to finish off a series of hit into a potential finisher is as simple as knowing the existence of super canceling. Even though Marvel vs Capcom 3 had things to help players understand more complex playing (The mission mode comes to mind) It didn't explain WHEN to do such a cancel. While I can see that these games are merely respecting basic human intelligence, they don't do so in a way where the player is engaged. Maybe they can disguise canceling in something that is visibly possible, like canceling a shoryuken into another uppercut super as to imitate an organic movement. When explaining buffering inputs from one move they can call it a "2 in 1 attack". Exploring different teaching methods ensures success.

I know from personal experience that I learn visually. I learned how to skate backwards by watching a character from Jet Grind Radio skate backwards. I learned how to wavedash, l-cancel, and shuffle in Melee with the "How 2 Hax in SSBM" video I posted earlier in the thread. It's brilliant as it shows the hand movements in the upper right of the video as the character is doing the action, and in addition to that explains them in a hilarious manner that is actually more helpful than one might think.

In the case for Marvel, If you understand the mechanics of Capcom fighters the knowledge simply translates over, but it also alienates a player base. At the same time Street Fighter is commonly played among casual players because it's simple premise and intuitive attack system with moves that can be done by themselves, or target combos that can be done just by pressing buttons in a certain order. Imitating this level of depth is both the most simple and most difficult phase in game development in my opinion.

Tutorials would help, but only people who really want to put in the effort. To use Marvel as an example again, I stopped playing the game very much because of the difficulty. I was trying to learn Dante before I gave up, but any time I stopped playing the game for a couple of weeks, I completely messed up the timing on his BnB combos (bold cancelling is kind of tough). At a certain point I just decided that the effort it would take to maintain skill in the game was not worth the effort unless I planned on tournament level play, which I did not.

With Brawl on the other hand, I can not play for weeks or months and still maintain a decent level of skill. Obviously, I'm not going to be as good as if I played hours a day every day, but after shaking off a bit of rust, I can get into pretty decent forms and play at a reasonably high level. This is one of the reasons why I continue playing Brawl while I've given up on most other fighting games, and why I'm reluctant to see the game become as technical as melee was.

 

[Tien2500]

First of all, right in the middle of your paragraph you're already wrong. "Compelling"? I never even went that far, and I could have because I've played with people who think tripping is hilarious. No, I never even said that: I said that they don't care. You know, there's more than just "love" and "hate". One can simply have no opinion. And, most people just don't care. They don't. This isn't Sakurai's silent majority. This is simply people having other **** to do. This is people buying Brawl because it's a party game made by Nintendo on a system that was (at the time) being starved for good games. Why would we assume they care again? Because we do? Because the Internet, the thing that can find something to hate in a puppy video, said so? Unlike Sakurai, I'm not claiming that most people hate or like something; I'm assuming that, like in EVERYTHING else, most people just don't give a ****. If they DID, they'd do something about it. If they DID, they'd be complaining; if anything, we'd see more people complaining, not less. I'm not going to assume that people love OR hate tripping. I'm going to assume that they have mortgages, work, children, school, and the economy to care about and don't give a flying god damn about it either way.

And, if that's the case, who cares?

I can indeed affirm that I did not care too much about tripping. Obviously it bothered me if I was winning a match and lost because of tripping, but as someone who wasn't playing for money or anything, I got over any trip induced losses rather quickly, and had a few hearty chuckles over inopportune trips.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

Tutorials would help, but only people who really want to put in the effort. To use Marvel as an example again, I stopped playing the game very much because of the difficulty. I was trying to learn Dante before I gave up, but any time I stopped playing the game for a couple of weeks, I completely messed up the timing on his BnB combos (bold cancelling is kind of tough). At a certain point I just decided that the effort it would take to maintain skill in the game was not worth the effort unless I planned on tournament level play, which I did not.

With Brawl on the other hand, I can not play for weeks or months and still maintain a decent level of skill. Obviously, I'm not going to be as good as if I played hours a day every day, but after shaking off a bit of rust, I can get into pretty decent forms and play at a reasonably high level. This is one of the reasons why I continue playing Brawl while I've given up on most other fighting games, and why I'm reluctant to see the game become as technical as melee was.

I can resent with you on the Dante thing, but then again he's my main, I can bold cancel almost effortlessly. God I love him.

The difference with your position and the "casual" smash bros player position is that you readily acknowledged that you didn't plan on playing in tournament, and that's fine. But the casual players feel self entitled, and even though they do not plan on participation, the opt for removal of potential depth, or so they say at least, as I have never heard anything from a truly casual player about removing canceling, wave dashing, dash dancing or whatever in Melee so it's safe to assume these stories are fabricated to lean towards their unfounded arguments.

I don't think that the players want to see something verge as technical as Melee in it's prime, but just something interesting that could generate the same level of depth while still maintaining a solid technical barrier. Speed wise, with current smash 4 speed and Melee techs the game could be much more receptive. As far as tech speed I feel like Street Fighter X Tekken has a fairly good pace, as the only things that truly require demanding inputs outside of character specifics are the Special move dash cancel. The hardest hing for me was Jin's EX power stance canceling. A lot of technical barriers are character specific as well, since my lil bro can destroy me with Hulk lol

 

[Jack Kieser]

I can resent with you on the Dante thing, but then again he's my main, I can bold cancel almost effortlessly. God I love him.

The difference with your position and the "casual" smash bros player position is that you readily acknowledged that you didn't plan on playing in tournament, and that's fine. But the casual players feel self entitled, and even though they do not plan on participation, the opt for removal of potential depth, or so they say at least, as I have never heard anything from a truly casual player about removing canceling, wave dashing, dash dancing or whatever in Melee so it's safe to assume these stories are fabricated to lean towards their unfounded arguments.

I don't think that the players want to see something verge as technical as Melee in it's prime, but just something interesting that could generate the same level of depth while still maintaining a solid technical barrier. Speed wise, with current smash 4 speed and Melee techs the game could be much more receptive. As far as tech speed I feel like Street Fighter X Tekken has a fairly good pace, as the only things that truly require demanding inputs outside of character specifics are the Special move dash cancel. The hardest hing for me was Jin's EX power stance canceling. A lot of technical barriers are character specific as well, since my lil bro can destroy me with Hulk lol

Good god, you're a salty guy. You've never heard anything from a "casual player about removing cancelling, wave dashing, dash dancing or whatever"? Could that be because they're casuals and don't know what they're called? Jesus. When a casual says "I prefer Brawl because Melee was just too hard", is it that difficult to figure out that they mean technically? Mechanically, all 3 games are practically the same; really, Melee only added side smashes and specials, and Brawl added Smash Balls, tethers, and flying. So, if Melee is harder, it's because of the mechanics. We already know the game was stupid fast, faster than what most non-competitive players really felt comfortable with; only we didn't want the game slower.

And, wavedashing was the most visible and prevalent tech that casuals could easily distinguish, and it was almost universally hated by people who weren't us (see: memes). Hell, I have good friends who aren't even casuals who think that stuff is stupid. Seriously. I was showing a really good friend of mine Cosmo's any % speed run of Ocarina of Time (the one from AGDQ 2013) and he said it wasn't a real run because of the glitches and that meant he wasn't "really playing the game". This is a guy I play ranked League of Legends with. He sees something like WD'ing and his head explodes. If he knew about all the other stuff in Melee, he'd never touch the game again out of disgust. This is not a strange way to view games. Can you really not believe that we're arguing in good faith here? Or are you so self absorbed that you really think that you matter so much to my life that I feel it necessary to fabricate the existence and opinions of people to win an internet argument with you?

 

[Ulevo]

Good god, you're a salty guy. You've never heard anything from a "casual player about removing cancelling, wave dashing, dash dancing or whatever"? Could that be because they're casuals and don't know what they're called? Jesus. When a casual says "I prefer Brawl because Melee was just too hard", is it that difficult to figure out that they mean technically? Mechanically, all 3 games are practically the same; really, Melee only added side smashes and specials, and Brawl added Smash Balls, tethers, and flying. So, if Melee is harder, it's because of the mechanics. We already know the game was stupid fast, faster than what most non-competitive players really felt comfortable with; only we didn't want the game slower.

And, wavedashing was the most visible and prevalent tech that casuals could easily distinguish, and it was almost universally hated by people who weren't us (see: memes). Hell, I have good friends who aren't even casuals who think that stuff is stupid. Seriously. I was showing a really good friend of mine Cosmo's any % speed run of Ocarina of Time (the one from AGDQ 2013) and he said it wasn't a real run because of the glitches and that meant he wasn't "really playing the game". This is a guy I play ranked League of Legends with. He sees something like WD'ing and his head explodes. If he knew about all the other stuff in Melee, he'd never touch the game again out of disgust. This is not a strange way to view games. Can you really not believe that we're arguing in good faith here? Or are you so self absorbed that you really think that you matter so much to my life that I feel it necessary to fabricate the existence and opinions of people to win an internet argument with you?

I know you won't accept this answer or anything, but it's not that it's a strange way to view games. It's an ignorant way to view games. Your friend probably doesn't even understand the specifics or the context of what he even dislikes when he sees it. It's criticism on face value without even knowing what you're watching. Take that for what you will, but it's hard to take that type of response seriously.

 

[Tien2500]

Honestly? The bolded part is kind of a shame. And this is where the casual vs competitive context comes in.

As a casual player, you can enjoy Melee just as much as you would Brawl. In this situation, the only time you felt discouraged was when you were exposed to player simply better than you, and the reason for this is simple. Melee rewards skill more than Brawl does. Brawl on a whole is simple, and even if you are significantly smarter, or significantly more experience, or have more practiced hand coordination, those assets mean significantly less. You as a player are not rewarded for your achievements or personal credentials of the game.

Well yes, that is the definition of competitiveness. All the same, the statement that "you as a player are not rewarded for your achievements... etc." is an overstatement. The results of Brawl tournaments are fairly consistent, so there is a reasonable level of competitiveness.

That is saddening from a competitive stand point. And the thing is, you never experienced this until you were exposed to competitive players. Sure, maybe they weren't tourney goers. I don't know. But they were competitive by spirit. This is not the games problem. This is a mix between your unwillingness to adapt to your surroundings, and the lack of consideration better players have for easing you in to their social group.

What makes this worse is that maybe in a game like Street Fighter, or Guilty Gear, or Mortal Kombat, or Tekken, you might have to strip the game of its complexities to solve the learning curve issue you experienced. But Smash? Smash has accessibility in a fighting game like nothing ever before.

The thing is though, that Melee isn't paricularly accessible, if you want to play at a high level. High level play is so vastly different than beginner level play that the adjustment is exceedingly difficult. Going from a good to great MvC 3 player is simply a matter of playing better. Learn to add a few hits to your combos, practice your timing, get better at reads and mix ups, etc. Going from good to great in Melee is learning a new game.

In an offline game like Melee this isn't a huge deal, but I plan on playing SSBU mostly online, which makes it a bigger issue.

s nothing that even comes close, and dumbing it doubt to appeal to people who simply don't want to learn to beat better people comes at the cost of detracting the experience for those more skilled players while doing nothing to significantly improve your dilemma when amongst friends of relative skill. The only thing it will do is ensure you get your *** ***** less by better players, but why does this really matter? If they're better, and you're not willing to put in the work, you shouldn't be playing them anyway. Especially if it frustrates. If you're not a competitive player, you also shouldn't be expecting to beat them. And if you stumble upon someone who gives you a trashing, no big deal. Just go back to your compatriots your comfortable with.

A bit of a misunderstanding. I don't necessarily expect to beat people who play the game a lot more than me, but I want to be able to be competitive. In other words, I don't want a technical barrier to completely eradicate my chances. I want to be able to do two things. Again, to use UMvC as an example, I can beat people who have WAY more tech skill than me with smart play, good reads, and learning their style. With Melee, I can't do that. As long as I'm on the other side of that technical wall, it doesn't really matter much what I do. Tech skill becomes the be all end all.

As for simply "not playing those people", again that's going to be a difficult proposition with an online game.

The difference between franchises like Guilty Gear and a franchise like Smash is it has appeal to both extremes in its audience. Guilty Gear does not. Casual Guilty Gear players don't exist. I'm not a Marvel player myself, but it's close enough to most fighters that it falls under the same parameters for required skill. If you can't keep up, then it's just not for you. Smash can be, but dragging down the players who are leagues above you because they earned it is not the correct approach.

Again, the difference is a technical wall and the fact that AT Melee is so wildly different from not AT Melee. I obviously don't like being beaten in Marvel, but when I am, I feel like I can learn from the experience, and use that experience to get better. I feel that if I play smarter, I can overcome technical deficiencies which are partially due to a lack of practice and partially due to natural limitations. Ditto for Brawl, or SF4, and so on. For Melee in particular, the difference between lower and higher level play is so vast that it seems futile.

Obviously, I can see why high level players would like that, and I'm not trying to argue what is better, fairer, or anything else. I'm just talking about what makes the game more enjoyable for me as a mildly competitive but uiltimately casual player.

 

[Jack Kieser]

I know you won't accept this answer or anything, but it's not that it's a strange way to view games. It's an ignorant way to view games. Your friend probably doesn't even understand the specifics or the context of what he even dislikes when he sees it. It's criticism on face value without even knowing what you're watching. Take that for what you will, but it's hard to take that type of response seriously.

What, are you kidding me? It's an incredibly shallow, incredibly uncultured way to view games, and I judge him for it incessantly. Cosmo's run is a work of god damn art. I've always said that if I ever get the chance to design a video game, it's going to be single player, and I'm going to take speed runners into account when I make it because that **** is beautiful.

But, he's allowed to think that. And, he's allowed to want games that don't have glitches in them. And, he's allowed to tell that to developers, who are then allowed to make that decision for themselves. And I may judge my friend for his preferences, but he's also my friend. It's not an asshole move for me to judge someone I know, while it is an asshole move to judge people I've not only never seen but probably never will interact with ever in my life. I know my friend. I don't know the average casual player.

I know you won't accept this answer or anything, because I can only be whatever 2-dimensional cutout of a person you all have designed me to be in your minds, but I can have multi-faceted, varied, contextual beliefs and thoughts.

 

[Ulevo]

The thing is though, that Melee isn't paricularly accessible, if you want to play at a high level.

Tien, ultimately the entire premise behind what you're trying to converse with me about boils down to this above quote. It's in complete contradiction. High level play is never easily accessible. Or at least it shouldn't be. That's why it's high level play. And what you're trying to tell me here is you want the easy route. To not have to work for as hard for your achievements because putting the time and effort in isn't worth it to you. I honestly can't accept that. Well I mean, I can accept that for you as who you are as a human being and everything. But it concerns me when this is the driving force behind peoples opinions on the internet on why Brawl is their game of choice, and why they hope a deeper, more rewarding game even remotely resembling Melee doesn't come back.

You sound like a casual player at heart, not someone who wants to compete. And there's nothing wrong with that. But you also sound like a casual player who doesn't like to lose. If you had to ask me, I think you should make up your mind about that, but I mean that's honestly none of my business.

I don't think I'll ever agree with you on this though, so I'll just leave it here.

What, are you kidding me? It's an incredibly shallow, incredibly uncultured way to view games, and I judge him for it incessantly. Cosmo's run is a work of god damn art. I've always said that if I ever get the chance to design a video game, it's going to be single player, and I'm going to take speed runners into account when I make it because that **** is beautiful.

But, he's allowed to think that. And, he's allowed to want games that don't have glitches in them. And, he's allowed to tell that to developers, who are then allowed to make that decision for themselves. And I may judge my friend for his preferences, but he's also my friend. It's not an ******* move for me to judge someone I know, while it is an ******* move to judge people I've not only never seen but probably never will interact with ever in my life. I know my friend. I don't know the average casual player.

I know you won't accept this answer or anything, because I can only be whatever 2-dimensional cutout of a person you all have designed me to be in your minds, but I can have multi-faceted, varied, contextual beliefs and thoughts.

Thoughts and opinions are fine. It's when those thoughts and opinions negatively impact the experiences of others around you because of your own shortcomings, without consideration to compromises, that it begins to become problematic.

This is in reference to your friend, of course.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

Good god, you're a salty guy. You've never heard anything from a "casual player about removing cancelling, wave dashing, dash dancing or whatever"? Could that be because they're casuals and don't know what they're called? Jesus. When a casual says "I prefer Brawl because Melee was just too hard", is it that difficult to figure out that they mean technically? Mechanically, all 3 games are practically the same; really, Melee only added side smashes and specials, and Brawl added Smash Balls, tethers, and flying. So, if Melee is harder, it's because of the mechanics. We already know the game was stupid fast, faster than what most non-competitive players really felt comfortable with; only we didn't want the game slower.

And, wavedashing was the most visible and prevalent tech that casuals could easily distinguish, and it was almost universally hated by people who weren't us (see: memes). Hell, I have good friends who aren't even casuals who think that stuff is stupid. Seriously. I was showing a really good friend of mine Cosmo's any % speed run of Ocarina of Time (the one from AGDQ 2013) and he said it wasn't a real run because of the glitches and that meant he wasn't "really playing the game". This is a guy I play ranked League of Legends with. He sees something like WD'ing and his head explodes. If he knew about all the other stuff in Melee, he'd never touch the game again out of disgust. This is not a strange way to view games. Can you really not believe that we're arguing in good faith here? Or are you so self absorbed that you really think that you matter so much to my life that I feel it necessary to fabricate the existence and opinions of people to win an internet argument with you?

Salty guy? I'm far from; i'm pretty chill. Weed, friends and girls help.

You on the other hand sound furious, as you felt the need to butt heads with someone because of a minor statement you dissected and blew way out of proportion with this wanna-be psychoanalyst mumbo jumbo. What's up with your use of "my"? Unless i'm specifically addressing Jack Kieser i'm not necessarily talking about you. I'd rather you not go about saying i'm some dude with a superiority complex, otherwise i'll just retort at your level with insults, and I can be quite the asshole if I want to be; but i'm not going to because anyone can look tough when they have a screen as their barrier from the real world, and I tend not to say things on the internet that I wouldn't tell someone in real life, but I digress.

I honestly should have clarified sine apparently i'm targeting you specifically. First off, tin my experience the players that I have met that didn't understand how to do these things never got mad, but rather asked me"What is that?" or "How do you do that?" instead of clamoring about it angrily. Some of the people I know thought it was awesome (I should have mentioned I was playing in public) and stated it looks like i'm doing triangle jumps in smash bros. I took the time to personally teach them some of these things and refered them to smashboards and nealpro (Now named All is Brawl) if they wanted to learn more about these aspects of smash. In the end I was respected for my performances, and only 1 person felt upset for losing to me, and coincidentally he was the loudest person there.

I don't need to fabricate anything, i'm just telling you from personal experience, and just because you're friends don't share the same mentality as others willing to learn doesn't make my story any less true, for all I know, you could be doing the same thing with your story about the people you are associated with; hypocritical much? If they really do feel that way about something that doesn't affect them in the slightest then I feel sorry for them for being so narrow minded. So what if someone used a glicth to do a speed run, it is what it is, a speed run, so Mr. goodie two shoes could take his complacent highly opinionated self somewhere else because that isn't going to stop me or anyone from enjoying them. And what does a League players opinion really have on a fighting game? If he doesn't touch the game so be it, one less self-entitled person I have to deal with.

As for you, you really need to cool your jets man, as no one was talking about your or anyone you are affiliated with. You come in here yelling at me and fabricating stories yet you are doing the exact same thing. Go outside or something, bro.

And personally (my opinion), **** league of legends. The only thing gained at the end of the day is Carpel Tunnel and swamp ass.

 

[Jack Kieser]

You're speaking past each other, Ulevo. He's talking about accessibility, you're talking about ease. Those are not the same. Chess is an accessible game that's hard to play at a high level. It's the classic "easy to learn, hard to master". Melee wasn't accessible nor was it easy. That's what we don't want again. We're fine with SSB4 having a little difficulty, but under NO circumstances should it be inaccessible at a high level of play.

EDIT @ EPF: That Picard goes double for you. I am pretty mad that you'd honestly assume that people are arguing in bad faith here, but that's because I'm a philosopher by trade and that stuff pisses me off. I never once asserted that you were "making stuff up" or anything, while you multiple times insinuated that anyone who disagreed with you was making up stuff to prove their points.

Meanwhile, you're talking about people who know what a Triangle Jump are, which means they're disqualified from being used in this discussion. No casual player of anything knows what a Triangle Jump is. Unless you're playing on a TV with an incredibly long extension cable whilst in a park, I'm assuming you're playing at a LAN center or other gaming establishment, which isn't "in public" as far as this discussion is concerned; these are all people who care about games and know about them in some deeper capacity.

And, again, you were so concerned with being a smartass and that oh-so-apparent elitism that drips from every post you talk about anyone's experience of casual players that doesn't match your own, you again missed the point entirely. Even otherwise harder-core gamers still have opinions that match up with casual-minded players. Does a League player have something to say about fighting games? Sure, why the hell not? Unlike you, I'm not so narrow-minded and self-absorbed as to ignore the feedback or opinion of someone purely because they play a different genre than me. But, that wasn't even the point, because what I used that anecdote to illustrate wasn't that he had something to say about our game, but that even players who are otherwise pretty hardcore gamers hold the view that some of the stuff fighting games do is stupid, and so you can't just use the "oh ho ho, they're not hardcore anyway" argument as a way to deflect their criticism.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

And another thing, please shut up with the "Melee is hard thing". You and I both know that when we were playing Melee for ****s and giggles no one and their mommas said the game was too difficult, we were way too busy throwing pokeballs at eachother to care. This whole Melee is too hard thing across from several people who meat ride Sakurai's mistranslated words. It's like Kuma said in another thread: Smashboards is the only place where people debate the meaning of words.

 

[Ulevo]

I'm very aware the context in which he speaks. I've also expressed repeatedly how I disagree with that. I even posted a video to emphasize this.

Melee was extremely accessible. It's a Smash game. It's literally the most approachable fighter you can find (barring someone proves me wrong with some obscure example.) I'm afraid I disagree here.

Accessibility however is about entry level. How well you receive the game on a first impression, and how well it encourages you to stay with it in the long term. Accessibility of the game doesn't involve your personal growth, however. That has to do with the difficulty of the learning curve. The game can still be approachable while being hard to master, and that's what all Smash games have had (with Brawl being the major exception.) What he's arguing is that it is not approachable from a competitive perspective, which is wrong on many levels.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

Melee wasn't accessible nor was it easy.

Seriously? Is this where you meet your wits end? Melee wasn't accessible? I really don't know how you could believe that. I have never known anyone who says a super smash bros. game isn't accessible. This isn't Guilty Gear dude.

 

[Jack Kieser]

Thoughts and opinions are fine. It's when those thoughts and opinions negatively impact the experiences of others around you because of your own shortcomings, without consideration to compromises, that it begins to become problematic.

This is in reference to your friend, of course.

They didn't negatively impact anyone around him. Who was around him? Me, and I agree with him that Smash is not the place for that bull**** game design. Marvel and SSF4 is. Keep the high tech skill there, I'm happy with Brawl's tech skill. As far as I'm concerned, his opinion hurt no one around him. Besides, the general casual community IS compromising with us. The game will be faster. Jesus, what do you people WANT from them? You do realize that a compromise means you get one thing, they get one thing, no one gets everything, right?

We get a faster game. They get no tech bull****. Sounds like a compromise to me.

EDIT: Yeah, at a high level, it WASN'T accessible nor easy. Hell, it was barely accessible at medium level, depending on how skilled your opponent was. Smash, conceptually, is INCREDIBLY accessible; you're correct to say that, comparatively, it's incredibly accessible at a high level.

But, a Tesla Roadster is comparatively cheap against a Ferrari; doesn't mean it actually IS cheap. Melee, at a high level, wasn't accessible. It just wasn't. It may have been compared to GG, but that's not the same statement.

 

[Vkrm]

First of all, right in the middle of your paragraph you're already wrong. "Compelling"? I never even went that far, and I could have because I've played with people who think tripping is hilarious.

Personal experiences shouldn't play a part in this. All the casuals I know despise tripping. What I wanted to establish was that these people who feel that tripping has a place in brawl are in the minority. It's far more common to find people who see it for what it is, a pointless feature that was made solely to exclude a certain group from enjoying brawl. A flow damaging nuisance, that everybody, niether casual and competitive would miss if it were to be removed.

No, I never even said that: I said that they don't care. You know, there's more than just "love" and "hate". One can simply have no opinion. And, most people just don't care. They don't.

How could you possibly know that? And if you could actually prove it I'd politely ask you to stop pretending sakurai is doing us a massive favor by removing it. What you're basically saying is the people who are least qualified to talk about game mechanics (casuals) don't have a problem with tripping, so its alright.

This isn't Sakurai's silent majority. This is simply people having other **** to do. This is people buying Brawl because it's a party game made by Nintendo on a system that was (at the time) being starved for good games. Why would we assume they care again? Because we do? Because the Internet, the thing that can find something to hate in a puppy video, said so? Unlike Sakurai, I'm not claiming that most people hate or like something; I'm assuming that, like in EVERYTHING else, most people just don't give a ****. If they DID, they'd do something about it.

Im told they call it project m.

If they DID, they'd be complaining; if anything, we'd see more people complaining, not less. I'm not going to assume that people love OR hate tripping.

Go look. Then again, according to you we can't go by comment section from every gaming journalism site that covers smash 4 in our analysis. Simply because it does not represent the feelings of people who don't have Internet, but do have wiis and brawl discs.

What strategic elements did we lose because of L-cancelling? None, that's what. There was no strategy to it; there was literally NEVER a time when you could have gotten half lag and would ever say to yourself "you know what? I think I want to take the lag this time, I'm not going to L-cancel". There was no strategy to it, that's the point. It was only an extra button press tacked on to ever time you were in the air attacking. That's stupid for Smash. Marvel or SSF4? Maybe a good idea, they're testing ridiculous dexterity in those games. But not Smash.

Does it escape you how profoundly different all 3 smash games have been? Who are you to say what is true to the spirit of smash? To answer your question, there have been plenty of times where I said to myself while playing brawl, if I had lower landing lag, I could've pressured his shield, I could've continued my combo, I would've been rewarded for successfully landing a hit, I wouldn't be forced to play defensively. You might be be able to make a case against the arbitrary input, but lower landing lag gave melee the flexibility it needed to enjoy the steady development of the metagame for over a decade. Also don't think I didn't notice you dodge my previous point. I wanted to talk about wavedashing.

Um, since when did I say that? Sakurai even said he doesn't want to do that. All I said was that you agreed with me that the OP is wrong that our ATs don't affect casuals. Which they do. Which you admitted to. So, yay.

I told you that average players could inadvertently come into contact with players with knowledge of D3's chain grab. With proper matchmaking this problem no longer exists, assuming we're given the option to find players who want to enjoy the game in a similar way. You want to know why melee wouldn't have this problem if it were played online, because all the truly powerful techniques in melee take dedication. Not at all like d3's chaingrab.

 

[Ulevo]

They didn't negatively impact anyone around him. Who was around him? Me, and I agree with him that Smash is not the place for that bull**** game design. Marvel and SSF4 is. Keep the high tech skill there, I'm happy with Brawl's tech skill. As far as I'm concerned, his opinion hurt no one around him. Besides, the general casual community IS compromising with us. The game will be faster. Jesus, what do you people WANT from them? You do realize that a compromise means you get one thing, they get one thing, no one gets everything, right?

We get a faster game. They get no tech bull****. Sounds like a compromise to me.

Your thoughts have implications to them, even if they're just thoughts. That's a huge philosophical conversation I'm not going to get in to though. Smash talk takes enough time to debate.

And as far as compromises are concerned, I'm not asking for anymore than I'm likely expecting to be in the next iteration. I'm only on here to give a different perspective to people who likely see things through one set of glasses and nothing else while I wait for a release date. Sakurai says he'll meet in the middle, and for now I'll take his word for it. I've seen the gameplay footages and so far I'm impressed by the direction.

That's not my concern though. The only reason Sakurai is doing what he's doing now is people like me expressed their thoughts and feelings on the matter, and continuing to do so is important. Doing so with reasonable, agreeable, respected logic is even more important. If everyone's on the same page, we can have games developed in a way we can all enjoy.

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

They didn't negatively impact anyone around him. Who was around him? Me, and I agree with him that Smash is not the place for that bull**** game design. Marvel and SSF4 is. Keep the high tech skill there, I'm happy with Brawl's tech skill. As far as I'm concerned, his opinion hurt no one around him. Besides, the general casual community IS compromising with us. The game will be faster. Jesus, what do you people WANT from them? You do realize that a compromise means you get one thing, they get one thing, no one gets everything, right?

We get a faster game. They get no tech bull****. Sounds like a compromise to me.

See, this is where your true colors are showing, and my suspensions of your incapability AND how you hang on Sakurai's every word are coming to light. If you didn't feel comfortable playing from an advanced level, then by all means don't play, but don't insist that another player base be compromised because you feel that it doesn't need these things. Does smash need technical barriers? If you look at if from a purely financial standpoint, not really, but it wouldn't be bad if Sakurai appealed to all the players that he vehemently claims he keeps in mind; that includes US too. If you can kill two birds with one stone, who wouldn't you? It's not going to hurt anyone, and you know it.

For future reference, if you don't like something, man up and say it instead of wasting other peoples time when they are simply being informative. It saves us the time of having to type of paragraphs to people who really don't want to learn anything.

 

[smashbrolink]

Does smash need technical barriers? If you look at if from a purely financial standpoint, not really, but it wouldn't be bad if Sakurai appealed to all the players that he vehemently claims he keeps in mind.

Said technical barriers don't need to be in the same form as Melee, things such as SHFFL and Wave Shining and such.
He's keeping the competitive side in mind merely by removing tripping and upping the pace.
That's more than enough; Smash 4 looks more than capable of competitive play right now.

 

[Jack Kieser]

Personal experiences shouldn't play a part in this. All the casuals I know despise tripping.

Those sentences are literally right freaking next to each other. Make up your mind.

How could you possibly know that? And if you could actually prove it I'd politely ask you to stop pretending sakurai is doing us a massive favor by removing it. What you're basically saying is the people who are least qualified to talk about game mechanics (casuals) don't have a problem with tripping, so its alright.

What I'm saying is that it's not bad design simply because we don't like it. Resident Evil (1) had controls that made Jill control like a tank that was alive and could get drunk and it decided to drink ALL OF THE LIQUOR ON THE PLANET, and they were the best controls in survival horror to this day. Not because we liked them; we hated them. And we were supposed to. They dis-empowered us, which was the point of horror. It made the game scarier, so our disliking the controls in no way made them worse, in a design sense.

Tripping could very well be like that. Unlike what you think I'm doing, I'm saying that's a possibility, not a certainty, because I'm biased like a mofo against tripping. I heavily suspect, though, that tripping did exactly what it was meant to do: that is to say, added a random element to matches and create lulz in FFAs.

Im told they call it project m.

Ha... haha... HAHAHAHA.... Really? Your counterpoint to me saying that the vast majority of the millions who bought Brawl didn't have an opinion on tripping is to point to Project M and say that it represents their opinions? You... I like you. You've got moxie. And, apparently, a metric ton of LSD.

Go look. Then again, according to you we can't go by comment section from every gaming journalism site that covers smash 4 in our analysis. Simply because it does not represent the feelings of people who don't have Internet, but do have wiis and brawl discs.

You mean have Brawl discs and Wii's, but don't care enough to go out of their way and ***** about a video game on a website because that time is better spent raising a child, supporting a family, or going to school, among a million other things that people find more important than impotent internet rage.

Does it escape you how profoundly different all 3 smash games have been? Who are you to say what is true to the spirit of smash? To answer your question, there have been plenty of times where I said to myself while playing brawl, if I had lower landing lag, I could've pressured his shield, I could've continued my combo, I would've been rewarded for successfully landing a hit, I wouldn't be forced to play defensively. You might be be able to make a case against the arbitrary input, but lower landing lag gave melee the flexibility it needed to enjoy the steady development of the metagame for over a decade. Also don't think I didn't notice you dodge my previous point. I wanted to talk about wavedashing.

Um... Sakurai is exactly the person who can say what is or is not in the spirit of Smash, since it's his game. Also, what dodge? No, seriously, no snark, what dodge? This thread moves fast, you're going to have to be explicit, chief.

I told you that average players could inadvertently come into contact with players with knowledge of D3's chain grab. With proper matchmaking this problem no longer exists, assuming we're given the option to find players who want to enjoy the game in a similar way. You want to know why melee wouldn't have this problem if it were played online, because all the truly powerful techniques in melee take dedication. Not at all like d3's chaingrab.

Really? First of all, we don't WANT the community segmented like that. We want new players, which means casual recruitment. We want them to see us. The problem is we don't want to turn them off to us entirely. Which means, no bull**** in our matches (at least from their perspective). If a player sees a competitive player doing something awesome, we want that player to think "man, I wish I had thought of that" and not "man, that's stupid". One has a higher chance of making them want to learn, the other has a higher chance of making them want to stop playing to make memes of us.

Also, fix that white space, man. Come on, now. You don't need a million carriage returns.

See, this is where your true colors are showing, and my suspensions of your incapability AND how you hang on Sakurai's every word are coming to light. If you didn't feel comfortable playing from an advanced level, then by all means don't play, but don't insist that another player base be compromised because you feel that it doesn't need these things. Does smash need technical barriers? If you look at if from a purely financial standpoint, not really, but it wouldn't be bad if Sakurai appealed to all the players that he vehemently claims he keeps in mind; that includes US too. If you can kill two birds with one stone, who wouldn't you? It's not going to hurt anyone, and you know it.

For future reference, if you don't like something, man up and say it instead of wasting other peoples time when they are simply being informative. It saves us the time of having to type of paragraphs to people who really don't want to learn anything.

Um, excuse me. First of all, I've never once hid my inability to move my fingers fast. I've been on these boards for years and everyone knows that I run tournaments, not enter them. Luckily, I also have a strong grasp of strategy and game knowledge, so I don't have to, and even if I didn't, the first thing you learn when you take off the diapers and join us in the real world is that what is said is more important than who is saying it; it's also called a non sequitur.

Second, as a TO, it's also in my favor to play it in the middle, and not to the extremes. I can't run a tournament if only the top 5 from the region show up. You may not want to recognize this, but that massive gaggle of pool players, 60-70% of which will never make it past playing a handful of matches? Yeah, those people finance your APEXs and your fancy nationals. Scare off all of the newcomers, and your community dies.

Third, as I've said before, we're getting our compromise, whether you agree to the terms or not.

Finally, whether or not I like something is irrelevant to whether it is beneficial or not. In this case, those two things match up, but I don't think Sakurai's direction is beneficial because I like it: I think it's beneficial because it's the most logical option given my view on the matter. Grow up.

Your thoughts have implications to them, even if they're just thoughts. That's a huge philosophical conversation I'm not going to get in to though. Smash talk takes enough time to debate.

Amen. I don't feel like having a metaphysics discussion right now. -_-

And as far as compromises are concerned, I'm not asking for anymore than I'm likely expecting to be in the next iteration. I'm only on here to give a different perspective to people who likely see things through one set of glasses and nothing else while I wait for a release date. Sakurai says he'll meet in the middle, and for now I'll take his word for it. I've seen the gameplay footages and so far I'm impressed by the direction.

I'll agree with you there. And, it seems like he's gone further than just speeding up the game, insofar as it seems like ledge snap is gone, or at bare minimum smaller. So, all good signs.

That's not my concern though. The only reason Sakurai is doing what he's doing now is people like me expressed their thoughts and feelings on the matter, and continuing to do so is important. Doing so with reasonable, agreeable, respected logic is even more important. If everyone's on the same page, we can have games developed in a way we can all enjoy.

You'll get no objections from me.

 

[Tien2500]

Tien, ultimately the entire premise behind what you're trying to converse with me about boils down to this above quote. It's in complete contradiction. High level play is never easily accessible. Or at least it shouldn't be. That's why it's high level play. And what you're trying to tell me here is you want the easy route. To not have to work for as hard for your achievements because putting the time and effort in isn't worth it to you. I honestly can't accept that. Well I mean, I can accept that for you as who you are as a human being and everything. But it concerns me when this is the driving force behind peoples opinions on the internet on why Brawl is their game of choice, and why they hope a deeper, more rewarding game even remotely resembling Melee doesn't come back.

You sound like a casual player at heart, not someone who wants to compete. And there's nothing wrong with that. But you also sound like a casual player who doesn't like to lose. If you had to ask me, I think you make up your mind about that, but I mean that's honestly none of my business.

I don't think I'll ever agree with you on this though, so I'll just leave it here.

It's not that I necessarily don't want to compete. I don't mean to be condescending or anything, but I have stuff to do. I would love nothing more than to be able to devote lots of time and energy to Smash, but that's just not in the cards. I don't know that I would devote the time and effort into Smash if I could, but at this point that's not an option. So, I want something that I find engaging, challenging and enjoyable, that I don't have to devote a crazy amount of time to.

That isn't to say I don't want to learn and get better when I do play. Obviously I don't want to win by random chance. If I did, I'd play Mario Kart. I want to learn matchups, I want to think up strategies, and so on so forth.

You misunderstand me on the subject of losing. I don't necessarily expect to win against a much better opponent. Obviously, as a human being, I like winning more than losing. What I really want though, is to be able to have an engaging experience. If I'm losing in SFIV, I can think (ok, player X likes to do this so I can counter with this). I can adapt and I can outwit, and even if I have trouble focus cancelling or I don't have combos drilled into my muscle memory, I can still be competitive by playing smart, learning my opponent, learning matchups, and so on. Maybe I'll be able to take a couple of matches, but even if I don't, I'll walk away with some worthwhile knowledge that I can apply on a lesser skill level. This is because there is a ladder of skill in Street Fighter IV. High level play in SFIV is a logical extension of low level play.

Melee on the other hand does not have this continuity in low vs high level play. High level play is not just tighter, more controlled, and smarter low level play, it's a completely different beast. If I play a high level melee player, I'll get destroyed, and I'll have wasted my time completely. I won't learn anything about matchups, I won't learn any new strategies, and I won't learn anything I can take back to playing against people at my own level. All I'll learn is that I either have to spend tons of time perfecting my tech skills, or I'm stuck playing people below my skill level.

That is the key thing here that I don't think I'm expressing correctly. If I play a high level Street Fighter player, I enjoy it whether I win or lose. I come out of it a better player. I learn a little something about how to improve my game. I gain knowledge that I can apply even without the most dextrous fingers int he world. Because of this, I can venture outside my own little skill bubble, and I can challenge people who are better than me without feeling like I've completely wasted my time. With Melee I don't feel that. I feel that it's simply those who have a lot of time to master ATs and keep them sharp vs those who don't, and as long as I'm the one side, challenging people outside my skill level is completely fruitless.

 

[Tien2500]

Tien, ultimately the entire premise behind what you're trying to converse with me about boils down to this above quote. It's in complete contradiction. High level play is never easily accessible. Or at least it shouldn't be. That's why it's high level play. And what you're trying to tell me here is you want the easy route. To not have to work for as hard for your achievements because putting the time and effort in isn't worth it to you. I honestly can't accept that. Well I mean, I can accept that for you as who you are as a human being and everything. But it concerns me when this is the driving force behind peoples opinions on the internet on why Brawl is their game of choice, and why they hope a deeper, more rewarding game even remotely resembling Melee doesn't come back.

You sound like a casual player at heart, not someone who wants to compete. And there's nothing wrong with that. But you also sound like a casual player who doesn't like to lose. If you had to ask me, I think you make up your mind about that, but I mean that's honestly none of my business.

I don't think I'll ever agree with you on this though, so I'll just leave it here.

It's not that I necessarily don't want to compete. I don't mean to be condescending or anything, but I have stuff to do. I would love nothing more than to be able to devote lots of time and energy to Smash, but that's just not in the cards. I don't know that I would devote the time and effort into Smash if I could, but at this point that's not an option. So, I want something that I find engaging, challenging and enjoyable, that I don't have to devote a crazy amount of time to.

That isn't to say I don't want to learn and get better when I do play. Obviously I don't want to win by random chance. If I did, I'd play Mario Kart. I want to learn matchups, I want to think up strategies, and so on so forth.

You misunderstand me on the subject of losing. I don't necessarily expect to win against a much better opponent. Obviously, as a human being, I like winning more than losing. What I really want though, is to be able to have an engaging experience. If I'm losing in SFIV, I can think (ok, player X likes to do this so I can counter with this). I can adapt and I can outwit, and even if I have trouble focus cancelling or I don't have combos drilled into my muscle memory, I can still be competitive by playing smart, learning my opponent, learning matchups, and so on. Maybe I'll be able to take a couple of matches, but even if I don't, I'll walk away with some worthwhile knowledge that I can apply on a lesser skill level. This is because there is a ladder of skill in Street Fighter IV. High level play in SFIV is a logical extension of low level play.

Melee on the other hand does not have this continuity in low vs high level play. High level play is not just tighter, more controlled, and smarter low level play, it's a completely different beast. If I play a high level melee player, I'll get destroyed, and I'll have wasted my time completely. I won't learn anything about matchups, I won't learn any new strategies, and I won't learn anything I can take back to playing against people at my own level. All I'll learn is that I either have to spend tons of time perfecting my tech skills, or I'm stuck playing people below my skill level.

That is the key thing here that I don't think I'm expressing correctly. If I play a high level Street Fighter player, I enjoy it whether I win or lose. I come out of it a better player. I learn a little something about how to improve my game. I gain knowledge that I can apply even without the most dextrous fingers int he world. Because of this, I can venture outside my own little skill bubble, and I can challenge people who are better than me without feeling like I've completely wasted my time. With Melee I don't feel that. I feel that it's simply those who have a lot of time to master ATs and keep them sharp vs those who don't, and as long as I'm the one side, challenging people outside my skill level is completely fruitless.

 

[Ulevo]

Said technical barriers don't need to be in the same form as Melee, things such as SHFFL and Wave Shining and such.
He's keeping the competitive side in mind merely by removing tripping and upping the pace.
That's more than enough; Smash 4 looks more than capable of competitive play right now.

Um, no, I'm afraid Smash is way deeper than that.

And how do you think the pace was fast in the first place?

 

[Ulevo]

It's not that I necessarily don't want to compete. I don't mean to be condescending or anything, but I have stuff to do. I would love nothing more than to be able to devote lots of time and energy to Smash, but that's just not in the cards. I don't know that I would devote the time and effort into Smash if I could, but at this point that's not an option. So, I want something that I find engaging, challenging and enjoyable, that I don't have to devote a crazy amount of time to.

That isn't to say I don't want to learn and get better when I do play. Obviously I don't want to win by random chance. If I did, I'd play Mario Kart. I want to learn matchups, I want to think up strategies, and so on so forth.

You misunderstand me on the subject of losing. I don't necessarily expect to win against a much better opponent. Obviously, as a human being, I like winning more than losing. What I really want though, is to be able to have an engaging experience. If I'm losing in SFIV, I can think (ok, player X likes to do this so I can counter with this). I can adapt and I can outwit, and even if I have trouble focus cancelling or I don't have combos drilled into my muscle memory, I can still be competitive by playing smart, learning my opponent, learning matchups, and so on. Maybe I'll be able to take a couple of matches, but even if I don't, I'll walk away with some worthwhile knowledge that I can apply on a lesser skill level. This is because there is a ladder of skill in Street Fighter IV. High level play in SFIV is a logical extension of low level play.

Melee on the other hand does not have this continuity in low vs high level play. High level play is not just tighter, more controlled, and smarter low level play, it's a completely different beast. If I play a high level melee player, I'll get destroyed, and I'll have wasted my time completely. I won't learn anything about matchups, I won't learn any new strategies, and I won't learn anything I can take back to playing against people at my own level. All I'll learn is that I either have to spend tons of time perfecting my tech skills, or I'm stuck playing people below my skill level.

That is the key thing here that I don't think I'm expressing correctly. If I play a high level Street Fighter player, I enjoy it whether I win or lose. I come out of it a better player. I learn a little something about how to improve my game. I gain knowledge that I can apply even without the most dextrous fingers int he world. Because of this, I can venture outside my own little skill bubble, and I can challenge people who are better than me without feeling like I've completely wasted my time. With Melee I don't feel that. I feel that it's simply those who have a lot of time to master ATs and keep them sharp vs those who don't, and as long as I'm the one side, challenging people outside my skill level is completely fruitless.

One of the reasons I stopped playing competitive Brawl was because I didn't have enough time to devote to it to succeed. Again. That's not the game's problem, it's mine.

 

[smashbrolink]

Um, no, I'm afraid Smash is way deeper than that.

And how do you think the pace was fast in the first place?

Sorry, but I'm afraid the technical side wasn't nearly as deep as people want to pretend it was.
It was complicated sometimes, but not deep.
The techs that were higher up on the complication scale won't be needed, and the pace is already fast enough to satisfy anyone who isn't looking for a pace precisely matching Melee or faster.[like MvC]

 

[Jack Kieser]

One of the reasons I stopped playing competitive Brawl was because I didn't have enough time to devote to it to succeed. Again. That's not the game's problem, it's mine.

But you shouldn't have to invest crazy amounts of hours into a Smash game in order to have competitive-style battles OR to have fun with the game in a more sophisticated way. Win tournaments? Yes, you should need a lot of time. Have deep matches for fun? Not a lot of time. That's the game's fault.

 

[Tien2500]

Double post.

 

[Tien2500]

One of the reasons I stopped playing competitive Brawl was because I didn't have enough time to devote to it to succeed. Again. That's not the game's problem, it's mine.

First off, do you think it takes as much time to be good at brawl and melee? Second of all, I can enjoy and improve, and have engaging match ups in other games in less time without the same investment.

 

[Vkrm]

Those sentences are literally right freaking next to each other. Make up your mind.

I wanted to illustrate how unreliable how personal experiences are in a debate. Your part about knowing a group of people who find humor in tripping is canceled out by my claim of the contrary. The underlying fact is one or both of us could be lying, so those types of statements add nothing to the discussion. I expected you to do a bit of mental work but I guess i could have been more clear

What I'm saying is that it's not bad design simply because we don't like it. Resident Evil (1) had controls that made Jill control like a tank that was alive and could get drunk and it decided to drink ALL OF THE LIQUOR ON THE PLANET, and they were the best controls in survival horror to this day. Not because we liked them; we hated them. And we were supposed to. They dis-empowered us, which was the point of horror. It made the game scarier, so our disliking the controls in no way made them worse, in a design sense.

Resident evil 1 is an example of how NOT to do it when compaired to games like dead space 1 or amnesia. They scared the crap out me without borderline broken controls. Resident evil 1 is fondly remembered because of the aesthetics. Creepy music, dreary backgrounds, and voice acting so bad, it took the role of comic relief.

Tripping could very well be like that. Unlike what you think I'm doing, I'm saying that's a possibility, not a certainty, because I'm biased like a mofo against tripping. I heavily suspect, though, that tripping did exactly what it was meant to do: that is to say, added a random element to matches and create lulz in FFAs.

inspires groans and rage induced runbacks more often.

Ha... haha... HAHAHAHA.... Really? Your counterpoint to me saying that the vast majority of the millions who bought Brawl didn't have an opinion on tripping is to point to Project M and say that it represents their opinions? You... I like you. You've got moxie. And, apparently, a metric ton of LSD.

Pffff, I wish. And is that what I said? I thought you said that if tripping was as hated as I claimed people there would people doing something about it. That's doesn't make you think of PM?

You mean have Brawl discs and Wii's, but don't care enough to go out of their way and ***** about a video game on a website because that time is better spent raising a child, supporting a family, or going to school, among a million other things that people find more important than impotent internet rage.

Even if they did see fit to share their opinions, I would not be inclined to listen to them because what do they actually know about game design?

Um... Sakurai is exactly the person who can say what is or is not in the spirit of Smash, since it's his game. Also, what dodge? No, seriously, no snark, what dodge? This thread moves fast, you're going to have to be explicit, chief.

You said tech skill has no place in smash, despite 2 out of the 3 having techskill. You also said sakurai is the only one who could actually make that call...... I doubt you're him. When I brought how wavedashing adds depth, you listed the flaws of L canceling.

Really? First of all, we don't WANT the community segmented like that. We want new players, which means casual recruitment. We want them to see us. The problem is we don't want to turn them off to us entirely. Which means, no bull**** in our matches (at least from their perspective). If a player sees a competitive player doing something awesome, we want that player to think "man, I wish I had thought of that" and not "man, that's stupid". One has a higher chance of making them want to learn, the other has a higher chance of making them want to stop playing to make memes of us.

So we need smash to function better as a spectator game? Melee does that. More accessible doesnt always translate to a bigger scene. Sf4, marvel, league, COD, and dota come to mind. Those are games that both more active and more complex/tech heavy and have a better success rate when it comes to inspiring players to become competitive. Besides, I thought those memes were funny, especially considering they had no basis in reality. We won't ever be able to do right by the people who see smash as a party game only. They went as as inventing no items fox only just so they could rag on us.

Also, fix that white space, man. Come on, now. You don't need a million carriage returns.

Eat me.

 

[Jack Kieser]

I wanted to illustrate how unreliable how personal experiences are in a debate. Your part about knowing a group of people who find humor in tripping is canceled out by my claim of the contrary. The underlying fact is one or both of us could be lying, so those types of statements add nothing to the discussion. I expected you to do a bit of mental work but I guess i could have been more clear

So, I guess you didn't see me bite EPF's head off for this, but this pisses me off more than anything else on these ****ing boards. Do not argue in bad faith. Don't do it. I assume that you're telling the truth, no matter what you say, because I'm a philosopher and the argument is all that matters. Yes, you could be lying. But, I'm going to assume you're not. If the only reason you want to keep experience out is because you think I'm lying :

A ) we're done here, because I'm not going to argue with someone who thinks I'm lying, and
B ) you're a ****ty internet debater in particular, and possibly a terrible one in person.

Either give me the benefit of the doubt that I give to you, or never quote me or try to talk to me again on here, and let me know so I can add you to my ignore list.

Resident evil 1 is an example of how NOT to do it when compaired to games like dead space 1 or amnesia. They scared the crap out me without borderline broken controls. Resident evil 1 is fondly remembered because of the aesthetics. Creepy music, dreary backgrounds, and voice acting so bad, it took the role of comic relief.

Ok, I know this is a Smash forum, but come on. You're comparing Japanese psychological horror to American slasher horror. Those aren't the same, not by far. Dead Space can be scary, sure, but it's a slasher, not a psych horror game. Ok, the first one maybe you could make the argument for, but even then, it was more action than horror. Any horror game that gives you empowerment and tools for adequate combat and survival is not a psychological horror game, and thus shouldn't be compared 1:1 with Resident Evil. Compared a bit, sure, but not 1:1. Dead Space's action horror aesthetic would suffer from bad controls the same way Resident Evil's tense psychological thrills would suffer from giving Jill a high powered rifle and perfect dodging mechanics.

I hope this illustrates my point and you can see how it relates to Smash and tripping.

inspires groans and rage induced runbacks more often.

If you say so, chief. In your LAN center, maybe. In my college, no.

Pffff, I wish. And is that what I said? I thought you said that if tripping was as hated as I claimed people there would people doing something about it. That's doesn't make you think of PM?

I said that if more people were angry, then more people would be doing something, not that no one is doing something. Obviously, people are salty about Brawl. Jeez. P:M makes me think of disgruntled Melee players who can't let go and don't know how to balance a game without changing all the mechanics, not casual players who have a bone to pick with Sakurai and want to start a movement.

Even if they did see fit to share their opinions, I would not be inclined to listen to them because what do they actually know about game design?

You wouldn't know until you listened to them. You can learn from all sorts of people once you realize that who is saying something is nowhere near as important as what is being said.

You said tech skill has no place in smash, despite 2 out of the 3 having techskill. You also said sakurai is the only one who could actually make that call...... I doubt you're him. When I brought how wavedashing adds depth, you listed the flaws of L canceling.

I never said techskill has no place in Smash. I said high levels of techskill have no place in Smash. Also, wavedashing brought depth, but was by no means perfect. The input was complex (comparatively), the timing was strict, and it was unintuitive and unbalanced. I mean, moving AND freely attacking? No. I've outlined changes I'd have made to WD'ing to make it more legitimate before (either in this thread or others), so I won't go over it unless you ask.

So we need smash to function better as a spectator game? Melee does that. More accessible doesnt always translate to a bigger scene. Sf4, marvel, league, COD, and dota come to mind. Those are games that both more active and more complex/tech heavy and have a better success rate when it comes to inspiring players to become competitive. Besides, I thought those memes were funny, especially considering they had no basis in reality. We won't ever be able to do right by the people who see smash as a party game only. They went as as inventing no items fox only just so they could rag on us.

I never said spectator game. I mean, it SHOULD be good for spectators, but that's for the streams / stream revenue. A game can be boring to watch and have a strong community (Starcraft) or be awesome to watch and few people play it (UMvC3, compared to some other games). Smash should, optimally, strike a balance. But, I'd rather it be fun than pretty. Also, they had some basis in reality. FD was one of the most common Melee stages at the time, and still is. And, items were banned at the time, and the community is still willing to go to war with SRK over their inclusion in matches; there's been few things that can make this community froth at the mouth more than their irrational hatred of items. Really, the only part that wasn't really accurate was the "Fox Only" part. And even that wasn't too far off; Fox is still top of Top tier in Melee.

Eat me.

Cute. Very cute. -_-

 

[Eternal phoenix Fire]

You're speaking past each other, Ulevo. He's talking about accessibility, you're talking about ease. Those are not the same. Chess is an accessible game that's hard to play at a high level. It's the classic "easy to learn, hard to master". Melee wasn't accessible nor was it easy. That's what we don't want again. We're fine with SSB4 having a little difficulty, but under NO circumstances should it be inaccessible at a high level of play.

EDIT @ EPF: That Picard goes double for you. I am pretty mad that you'd honestly assume that people are arguing in bad faith here, but that's because I'm a philosopher by trade and that stuff pisses me off. I never once asserted that you were "making stuff up" or anything, while you multiple times insinuated that anyone who disagreed with you was making up stuff to prove their points.

Meanwhile, you're talking about people who know what a Triangle Jump are, which means they're disqualified from being used in this discussion. No casual player of anything knows what a Triangle Jump is. Unless you're playing on a TV with an incredibly long extension cable whilst in a park, I'm assuming you're playing at a LAN center or other gaming establishment, which isn't "in public" as far as this discussion is concerned; these are all people who care about games and know about them in some deeper capacity.

And, again, you were so concerned with being a smartass and that oh-so-apparent elitism that drips from every post you talk about anyone's experience of casual players that doesn't match your own, you again missed the point entirely. Even otherwise harder-core gamers still have opinions that match up with casual-minded players. Does a League player have something to say about fighting games? Sure, why the hell not? Unlike you, I'm not so narrow-minded and self-absorbed as to ignore the feedback or opinion of someone purely because they play a different genre than me. But, that wasn't even the point, because what I used that anecdote to illustrate wasn't that he had something to say about our game, but that even players who are otherwise pretty hardcore gamers hold the view that some of the stuff fighting games do is stupid, and so you can't just use the "oh ho ho, they're not hardcore anyway" argument as a way to deflect their criticism.

Dude, you are being presumptuous. How do you know they don't know what a triangle jump is? And ever since when did I say he was a casual player? To Smash perhaps, but Marvel, where triangle jumps are prominent, no he is not a casual player. You're making assumptions. And how does that disqualify him from being in a discussion because of the information he knows? Because doesn't pertain to smash doesn't mean anything.

Unlike you, you aren't narrow minded? If you aren't narrow minded then why are you arguing against depth in the first place? See, your problem is that you can't make an argument without making yourself look like a hypocrite. You call me an elitist, yet you blatantly call things that require practice "bull****". You are acting like the very thing you seek to destroy; an elitist, only difference is no ones is being shovanistic enough to force what they perceive is for the greater good of the community. That's what you're doing. Not only that, you are simultaneously attempting to represent the players that you aren't even a part of, because face it, if you are typing this at these hours of the night, you aren't a casual player by any means.

The reason why i'm not taking that dude you know who plays League seriously is not only because of what he plays, but the way you explained his response to something that doesn't affect him in the slightest, stating "He wouldn't touch the game out of pure disgust" , a bit of an exaggeration don't you think? Of course i'm not going to care about the opinion of someone who is clearly being condescending. Feed back is always welcome, but given his disgust why should he be included in the grand scheme of things.

You call out names and make personal attacks out of my remarks, yet you defend your condescending friends without even reflecting on the context. That's some strait machiavallian bull**** dude. I don't care if you are Aristotle, Socrates, Plato or whatever you want to throw out there, it doesn't stop you from being hypocritical.

I never said techskill has no place in Smash.

They didn't negatively impact anyone around him. Who was around him? Me, and I agree with him that Smash is not the place for that bull**** game design. Marvel and SSF4 is. Keep the high tech skill there, I'm happy with Brawl's tech skill. As far as I'm concerned, his opinion hurt no one around him. Besides, the general casual community IS compromising with us. The game will be faster. Jesus, what do you people WANT from them? You do realize that a compromise means you get one thing, they get one thing, no one gets everything, right?

We get a faster game. They get no tech bull****. Sounds like a compromise to me.

 

[Vkrm]

So, I guess you didn't see me bite EPF's head off for this, but this pisses me off more than anything else on these ****ing boards. Do not argue in bad faith. Don't do it. I assume that you're telling the truth, no matter what you say, because I'm a philosopher and the argument is all that matters. Yes, you could be lying. But, I'm going to assume you're not. If the only reason you want to keep experience out is because you think I'm lying :

This has nothing to do with my opinion of you. Nothing you've said so far makes think you're anymore likely to lie than anyone else. I feel they have no place in debates because their truth indistinguishable from their non truth.

A ) we're done here, because I'm not going to argue with someone who thinks I'm lying, and
B ) you're a ****ty internet debater in particular, and possibly a terrible one in person.

Well you know what they say, practice makes perfect. If potentially embarrassing one of the melee fan boys doesn't provide enough incentive for you to continue, that's fine. Doesn't hurt my opinion of you. There's no way you're enjoying this more than I am.

Either give me the benefit of the doubt that I give to you, or never quote me or try to talk to me again on here, and let me know so I can add you to my ignore list.

at this point I'm going to just refrain from listing the things I've personally experienced as a counter argument.

Ok, I know this is a Smash forum, but come on. You're comparing Japanese psychological horror to American slasher horror. Those aren't the same, not by far. Dead Space can be scary, sure, but it's a slasher, not a psych horror game. Ok, the first one maybe you could make the argument for, but even then, it was more action than horror. Any horror game that gives you empowerment and tools for adequate combat and survival is not a psychological horror game, and thus shouldn't be compared 1:1 with Resident Evil. Compared a bit, sure, but not 1:1. Dead Space's action horror aesthetic would suffer from bad controls the same way Resident Evil's tense psychological thrills would suffer from giving Jill a high powered rifle and perfect dodging mechanics.

Played nemesis? Seriously though I thought we were talking about how the controls were integral to the horror experience. Disempowerment works well enough when the player character is relatable. It works fine as long we actually are weaker than most of the enemies. Siren blood curse excelled at this. Frustration is all ****e controls did for resident evil.

If you say so, chief. In your LAN center, maybe. In my college, no.

This is why, statements like this shouldn't be here. We could go back and forth withou either of really making a strong argument one way or another.

I said that if more people were angry, then more people would be doing something, not that no one is doing something. Obviously, people are salty about Brawl. Jeez. P:M makes me think of disgruntled Melee players who can't let go and don't know how to balance a game without changing all the mechanics, not casual players who have a bone to pick with Sakurai and want to start a movement.

Pm is shaping up to the best version of melee available. It doesn't seem redundant if you see as a replacement for melee instead of a separate game intended to exist along side it.

You wouldn't know until you listened to them. You can learn from all sorts of people once you realize that who is saying something is nowhere near as important as what is being said.

True enough.

I never said techskill has no place in Smash. I said high levels of techskill have no place in Smash. Also, wavedashing brought depth, but was by no means perfect. The input was complex (comparatively), the timing was strict, and it was unintuitive and unbalanced. I mean, moving AND freely attacking? No. I've outlined changes I'd have made to WD'ing to make it more legitimate before (either in this thread or others), so I won't go over it unless you ask.

I would like to see that actually. I see wave dashing to be impossible to simplify without a loss of depth.

I never said spectator game. I mean, it SHOULD be good for spectators, but that's for the streams / stream revenue. A game can be boring to watch and have a strong community (Starcraft) or be awesome to watch and few people play it (UMvC3, compared to some other games). Smash should, optimally, strike a balance. But, I'd rather it be fun than pretty.

Also, they had some basis in reality. FD was one of the most common Melee stages at the time, and still is. And, items were banned at the time, and the community is still willing to go to war with SRK over their inclusion in matches; there's been few things that can make this community froth at the mouth more than their irrational hatred of items. Really, the only part that wasn't really accurate was the "Fox Only" part. And even that wasn't too far off; Fox is still top of Top tier in Melee.

But it's been years since fox has won a national if I'm not mistaken. I distinctly remember puff was considered the be all end all of melee back then. My point is the people who hate on competitive smash don't need the bull**** they spout to be even remotely true. These are the same people who go off on brawl for not having combos.

 

[Jack Kieser]

Dude, you are being presumptuous. How do you know they don't know what a triangle jump is? And ever since when did I say he was a casual player? To Smash perhaps, but Marvel, where triangle jumps are prominent, no he is not a casual player. You're making assumptions. And how does that disqualify him from being in a discussion because of the information he knows? Because doesn't pertain to smash doesn't mean anything.

Um... um, what? What are you... *checks posts* Are we reading the same thing? Because I honestly have no idea what you're going on about. I... I'm honestly confused. If this is some sort of "play ********" gambit, it's working perfectly.

I never said the people you met didn't know what a Triangle Jump was. I explicitly assumed they did, and then said that they don't count in this discussion because they're obviously not casuals if they know what a TJ is. He can discuss things if he's here, sure, but you were explicitly talking about what casuals think about the game, then brought up the opinion of someone who was obviously not a casual player. That's... well, stupid.

Unlike you, you aren't narrow minded? If you aren't narrow minded then why are you arguing against depth in the first place? See, your problem is that you can't make an argument without making yourself look like a hypocrite. You call me an elitist, yet you blatantly call things that require practice "bull****". You are acting like the very thing you seek to destroy; an elitist, only difference is no ones is being shovanistic enough to force what they perceive is for the greater good of the community. That's what you're doing. Not only that, you are simultaneously attempting to represent the players that you aren't even a part of, because face it, if you are typing this at these hours of the night, you aren't a casual player by any means.

I never argued against depth as a concept. Ever. Not once. In my life. I've argued against depth at the cost of accessibility, yes, but even then, only in relation to Smash. You want me to be a hypocrite because you think that somehow matters to my argument: even if I was a hypocrite, you'd still have to deal with the argument itself, the words on the screen independent of who I am, which you're apparently incapable of doing.

Besides, I view myself as the middle ground that Sakurai is aiming at; casual in execution, hardcore in theory, with a healthy appreciation for both and what both do well and what both fail at. Much better an approach in my eyes than "**** the casuals, I want what I want". I can defend both sides equally well (which you haven't seen because this isn't a "**** the competitive players" thread, this is a "the casuals are ruining our depth" thread). I find it funny that you dedicate a whole paragraph without talking once about Smash.

The reason why i'm not taking that dude you know who plays League seriously is not only because of what he plays, but the way you explained his response to something that doesn't affect him in the slightest, stating "He wouldn't touch the game out of pure disgust" , a bit of an exaggeration don't you think? Of course i'm not going to care about the opinion of someone who is clearly being condescending. Feed back is always welcome, but given his disgust why should he be included in the grand scheme of things.

Um, what do you mean "doesn't affect him"? It would affect him very much, if he was playing the damn game. Especially since I'd try to use that stuff on him. He never once said that the players were disgusting, because they were using what was available to them. But, it disgusted him that the game was like that, that it allowed for it, and it disappointed him that, in the case of the speedrun, people considered that "beating the game" (and there's a legitimate argument that it's NOT "beating the game"). He felt better once I told him about 100% and natural route runs, though.

You call out names and make personal attacks out of my remarks, yet you defend your condescending friends without even reflecting on the context. That's some strait machiavallian bull**** dude. I don't care if you are Aristotle, Socrates, Plato or whatever you want to throw out there, it doesn't stop you from being hypocritical.

It's because he wasn't condescending? He thought abusing a glitch was cheating, which depending on the definition of "cheating"... IS cheating. Besides, this is all horribly off-topic. Now, you're just ranting, you're not even TALKING about Smash anymore. Get your head straight and come back when you're ready to get on topic again.