Oh man, here comes the passion....
It's my sincerest hope that PM really kicks into gear and replaces Melee sometime in the future, maybe even the near future. You could argue that PM is already kicked into gear, if so, then I would want PM kicked into overdrive. Not just content with replacing Melee and getting the carryover from Melee's current player-base, but even going so far as to garner Brawl faithfuls and new blood from around the world.
Why would I think this? Because I really, REALLY believe that PM, even in its current unfinished state, is a better game than Melee. Now, before I get start getting hundreds of replies bashing me from all sides, hear me out - Melee is a wonderful game, in fact, it was really the game that kicked the community in the balls and said, "look, this is what a fresh genre of competitive fighting game looks like, and this is what you can do, and this is how hype it can get." Unfortunately, the thing with Melee is that it was never designed to be competitive, and that's a point that's worth reiterating time and time again. The idea of a game created on the principles of competitive Melee, governed by a team of developers and players that love and understand the game intimately enough, and sitting on top of an engine that makes it all possible, is really a holy grail combination that can make real the next step in smash's evolution.
Now, I'm not here to dismiss Melee completely, the game itself deserves a lot of respect in its legacy and what it has taught all of us; I'm not here to just kick an old game while it's down. What I am going to do is highlight a few major flaws that, in my opinion, is the driving force for why PM is better than Melee. Melee's best parts are infallible, which is exactly why PM exists, but in the same way, its flaws are glaring, which is also exactly why PM should exist.
1. This is the most important point to drive home. Melee's end-to-end tier list is too large. What do I mean by this? No, Melee doesn't have too many characters. What I mean is that the "power" gap between the top 5 characters in the game and the bottom 5 characters is just too large. This is easily summed up by a single word known as "imbalanced". Many of you might say, "Man iode, it's terribly difficult to create a fighting game that's perfectly balanced, even for fighting games that were designed from the ground up by developers to be balanced, why all the hate for Melee?" Well, first off, I wouldn't love PM so much if I hated Melee, and secondly, that's the sheer and utter beauty of PM - it CAN be balanced.
Consider this scenario to highlight just how imbalanced Melee can be.
The top 5 players in the world obviously have poured hundreds if not thousands of hours into this game. They have perfected their craft. They have perfected their Falco, their Fox, their Sheik, their Marth, their Puff, and their Peach. And as such, they have reaped the rewards. More than once, they have walked out of a major with heads held high, fistful of cash, glory in hand. First place, second place, or maybe third place. Now let's change perspectives a little, away from the limelight of the best of the best, let's consider the DK mains, the Roy mains, the Link mains, the Pichu mains, the Yoshi mains, and even the Falcon mains... this list goes on and on. What if they too, poured hundreds if not thousands of hours into the game as well? What if they too, also want the win just as badly as the top 5 players? What if they too, have perfected their craft with just as much grit and passion as any of the top players? After all, they have single handedly carried nearly the entire metagame of their character on their backs. Their controller stick is just as worn out as everyone else's. Now, I'm not going to name any names, but names should pop up in your mind almost instantly. Don't they also deserve a shot at the top, a place in the spotlight, while still playing a character they have every right to use? Does hard work, blood, and sweat not equate even a chance? Melee, in its current state, asks this question of these players, "Do you want to keep playing your low tier or do you want to break the top 5 at a national?" Just the fact that Melee forces players to answer that question, is a huge flaw in and of itself. It's upsetting when hard work and talent may not necessarily equate itself to higher placement just because of a character choice.
Before you tell me that at high level, it's player skill that determines match outcomes and character johns are just excuses, play this scenario in your mind first - a Melee match between the world's best Bowser versus the world's best Fox. What happens? You're forced to automatically assuming that that Fox will win. Mindsets like that shouldn't happen. It means you're already compensating for the characters' tier list when deciding the outcome of the match. What if the Bowser main has put in double, no triple, the hours of the Fox main? Yet, the outcome appears to be the same, time and time again. This is the current state of Melee, and it cannot be changed. But my oh my, is PM such an elegant solution for such a dire issue.
2. Cast variability. because of the above-stated reason, Melee has fallen into sort of a slump of match up repetition. This is a harder point to argue as the above one, since it's kind of subjective. In my opinion, PM offers a much needed cast expansion, and the fact that PM can, and will, be balanced means that the entire 100% of the character count can be put to use in staging matchups that will continue to excite players and audience alike. Melee has 7 highly recurring characters in tournaments. Obviously, those 7 conveniently fall within the top 7 of the tier list. A combination of 7 choose 2, means that Melee tournaments, on average, will host a mathematically converging count of 21 different matchups. Now let's look at the theoretical numbers for PM. Assuming graceful balancing and relative viability per character, we're looking at 38 choose 2 combinations of matchups. That's a whopping 703 possible matchups. That. Is. ****ing. Beautiful. What better way to breathe new life into a genre of fighting game that we all love to the ends of the world than to have matchups that have us guessing who the hell is going to win? What technology is viable against whom? Variability is a wonderful thing guys, and I can attest to it myself, especially when watching Wobbles vs Fly Amanita in IC dittos at KoC2, a lot of the excitement in the room and on stream came from the freshness of the matchup and the unknown technique they were trying on each other. I believe the Smash game to deliver this jolt of hype and complexity is most definitely Project M.
3. God-damn balance, man. It's so freaking important. Why is League of Legends, a game probably all of you are familiar with, so successful? Why is it able to host multi-million dollar tournaments around the world... multiple times a year? It's because it's a game in motion. It's a game that has the seeing eye of fairness looking on 24/7. Being a free online game also helps as well. But really, the competitive scene thrives off of balance. It thrives off of knowing that wrongs can be righted. It thrives when everyone knows they and their flavor of character really has a chance against the next Mango, Hbox, PP, Armada, or M2K. All it takes is hard work and a dash of talent. This may seem like a reiteration of my first point, but it certainly is important enough to be restated. Project M is the hands-down answer and solution to all three points I laid out. Even in its current beta state.
It's not my intention for people reading this to convert to PM and be hostile to Melee. Far from it, in fact. I definitely don't think it's proper for there to be any animosity between smash communities. If anything, I believe that Project M's success will be very much due to the support of Melee players in the future. Melee players are a special breed, able to raise nearly $100,000 in charity to keep a game they feel strongly about alive. It's that same kind of passion that I hope will hold Project M up, even in its most troubling times.
TL;DR
No, read it all, or don't. I bled my soul dry on smashboards tonight.
