I disagree with how 3.5 approached balance.

[MechWarriorNY]

what if I think Bowser is bad

 

[jtm94]

what if I think Bowser is bad

Then you don't know what super armor and cheese is.

 

[Anonistry]

Then you don't know what super armor and cheese is.

What was that about Dorf's new taunt attack?

 

[Designs]

Why such drastic nerfs? You guys killed what made your version superb. Mewtwo was not as OP as everyone claimed and poor zelda is crippled. Even Toon Link isn't fun to use anymore. Hardcore PM fan since 2.5 and I'm not impressed. A misstep in the direction of fast paced smash.

 

[jtm94]

It's really not that bad. A highlight of a single day of the new version

The game can be very fast. The goal was not to hit speed, but to require actions be more calculated now.

 

[Juushichi]

Zelda is fine.

World-Warp stamina is the ****.

 

[Fenrir VII]

I've been looking for a place to air my opinions, and this seems like a decent one.

It's...tough to heel-turn a project after it's established. I actually admire the gall of the PMDT to essentially super-nerf MOST of the cast, after A) saying that there would be no more super nerfs... only minor tweaks, and B) every single nerf in the past was met with endless "you ruined my character!!!" responses.
A lot of the problems that players had with PM was that it really wasn't worth investing the time to learn a character, only to have them brutalized in the next version. And while that's a bit...exaggerated, you have to admit that there's a fair point buried in there.

The 'jank' of the 3.0 (and prior) releases was almost the entire charm of PM. Essentially you could pick up any character and think "my god this character has SO MANY OPTIONS!!". I really think that's one of the reasons that so many newer players flocked to the game, even above Melee at times. Every character felt so good by themselves. The problem arising was that this encourages the character-blaming method of losing. i.e. if YOUR character is amazing and you still lose, it must mean that YOUR OPPONENT'S character is just RIDICULOUS!!! Right? ...right?
I can't even explain how many times I heard X character is broken or Y move is too safe (one particular guy in my community actively complained about over half the cast being broken...we counted). This was a prevailing problem in most of the community and even the PMDT guys. When you guys can turn knobs and make characters worse, then WHY AREN'T YOU NERFING ALL THESE OTHER CHARS?!? (obviously my character is completely fair, so you don't need to touch him)
I seriously don't envy the PMDT for trying to A) make decisions when I'm SURE there were disagreements within the team itself and B) respond to all the flat out complainers out there.

I too disagree with the "nerf everyone!" approach, because as I said, it takes out a lot of the appeal of the prior releases (which, while they had some stupid stuff... they were actually pretty darn balanced), and essentially wipes the board and starts over. All that said, I can definitely understand why it was done, even if it is counter to my opinions.

The real problem I have with this release is the over-arching strategy, truthfully. Given that the previous versions of PM existed and most of us "grew up" on them, moving to 3.5 essentially feels like "man, everybody sucks now"... and that's a very hard pill to swallow. Essentially, the point that was brought up about "why would I learn this character only to have it nerfed?" has been applied across the board (almost)... and that will end up stinging ALL players, especially the newer players that don't really post much here.
While this might have been the right direction to take from the start... switching to it now will almost certainly alienate a large portion of the players to some extent... at a time when we really couldn't afford to alienate them.

That brings me to the other point here... If this balance update was released a month or 2 ago (possibly sacrificing some of the additional content until later), it would still be an issue, but people would not have had much else to play, so they would have been more likely to accept the changes and move on. but releasing it a week before a very major release that a lot of people (especially the crucial new players) are excited about? I really can't see the logic behind that. PM and SSB4 have different audiences, but you have to realize that there's at least a decent chunk of overlap in the audiences here.

So we currently have 5 big Smash games.
-SSB64 is kind of its own beast and is mostly absent from non-huge tournaments
-Melee will probably never die
-Brawl is likely on its way out with 4 being fairly similar.
-PM just had huge changes that a lot of people...aren't happy about.
-SSB4 is going to be a monster for every sponsored tourney for the forseeable future. It also doesn't have the obvious problems that Brawl did (which players noticed immediately).

When you're looking at day/weekend long tournaments in the near future... the event list has to be fairly tight. I was concerned for PM when it was still 3.02 and SSB4 was looming... now that we've essentially cut everybody's ties to their current characters, I'm afraid for the future of the game.

That's just my 2 cents. I do like the game and the amount of time and effort that went into it, and I'm certainly not trying to flame anybody here. I just question the overall planning/strategy that got us to today.

 

[MechWarriorNY]

Probably could've made the post's point without building the Great Wall of the West, but whatever.

 

[Frost | Odds]

what if I think Bowser is bad

He was awful- within the bottom 3 worst in the game easily.

But now, I really think he's at least okay, and very possibly too good. We'll see.

 

[UltimateLikeWarriorReborn]

Diddy nerfs tho.

 

[GP&B]

I really don't think jank being the feature of PM3.0 was a good thing at all.

 

[Fenrir VII]

I really don't think jank being the feature of PM3.0 was a good thing at all.

You might be right. Although I do want to say it was in earlier releases too... heck it was the goal of PM from the start (if you interpret jank = making all characters as good as the top tiers).

My comment is more related to... A) that's a reason (not the only one) for the game being so loved by the more inexperienced players and B) it's hard to move from that to 3.5 without feeling like the wind got let out of the sails, and a HECK of a lot of relearning is necessary.

 

[Azureflames]

Overall I think 3.5 is exactly what we needed. It kinda threw out some interesting changes for some and some very necessary changes for others. I still think that some characters could be tweaked though, but i think its just personal hatred for certain playstyles and character gimmicks that cant be helped. I thought there were WAY too many janky abilities and gimmicky ways to play in 3.0 so im really glad that characters like M2/lucas/diddy got nerfed a bit.

Also said was something along the lines of "gimmicks being the charm of PM" and i hardly agree, although they very much existed. Jank is equal to clunky gimmicks and the characteristic of a bunch of characters that made it feel like you were hardly fighting the player and more like fighting the character. Just because a character has options doesnt ALWAYS mean they have jank, although janky abilities can give a character more options (which was the case for some among the top tiers).

When it comes to the ZZS i can totally get that people are frustrated but i feel like it was necessary for ZSS to not be too strong, but thats arguable. She seems almost in a worse place now since grabs weren't really a large basis of her game (as opposed to say roy or marth). blaster is literally worthless from what i can tell now, so it changes the way she has to play more than it's changed a lot of other characters in terms of how much player adjustment needs to be made.

@ Fortress I dont know if i fully agree with the mindset you have, or at least the way you're telling people to just disregard any of the changes. I do agree with the overall feeling you have though. People need to just adapt and deal with it, but i dont think there's anything wrong with comparing from previous versions so long as its from an objective perspective.

On that note...people seriously need to look at the characters they play and analyze the jank they might have been using or stop thinking so subjectively about it all. All the changes that i saw seemed pretty reasonable from an objective point of view. Anyone that's exaggerating by saying "3.5 is unplayable because everyone got nerfed" is just being ridiculous and probably abused the **** out of character gimmicks instead of intelligent reads and punishes.

@whoever mentioned a comparison to pikachu and fox with ledgesnapping. Seriously? you're comparing fox side b to pika side-b? Those are two very different moves. I've also never seen a single decent pika player opting for side-b to snap to the ledge when they could easily just up-b snap. I'd argue Pika has a better recovery than fox and has really good gimping power anyway. Pika can use side b AND Up-b. If anything you should compare pika up b and fox side-b. pika has a pretty decent up b if you know how to aim for ledge and its not the easiest thing to edgeguard either.

About the mewtwo comments - totally think that M2 needed more stuff adjusted with his neutral, not just his projectile and float adjustment. That fair comes out so fast and Nair is so broken imo.

In general i'm tired of all the jank from chaingrabs, low risk high reward spammable projectiles, low cd aerial spamming, recoveries from blast zone borders, and lack of counterplay against some of the characters who can just mindlessly spam certain moves to get decent results. I'm super happy with 3.5 so far and i think it'll be a good healthy balance patch for the game.

 

[Designs]

Overall I think 3.5 is exactly what we needed. It kinda threw out some interesting changes for some and some very necessary changes for others. I still think that some characters could be tweaked though, but i think its just personal hatred for certain playstyles and character gimmicks that cant be helped. I thought there were WAY too many janky abilities and gimmicky ways to play in 3.0 so im really glad that characters like M2/lucas/diddy got nerfed a bit.

Also said was something along the lines of "gimmicks being the charm of PM" and i hardly agree, although they very much existed. Jank is equal to clunky gimmicks and the characteristic of a bunch of characters that made it feel like you were hardly fighting the player and more like fighting the character. Just because a character has options doesnt ALWAYS mean they have jank, although janky abilities can give a character more options (which was the case for some among the top tiers).

When it comes to the ZZS i can totally get that people are frustrated but i feel like it was necessary for ZSS to not be too strong, but thats arguable. She seems almost in a worse place now since grabs weren't really a large basis of her game (as opposed to say roy or marth). blaster is literally worthless from what i can tell now, so it changes the way she has to play more than it's changed a lot of other characters in terms of how much player adjustment needs to be made.

@ Fortress I dont know if i fully agree with the mindset you have, or at least the way you're telling people to just disregard any of the changes. I do agree with the overall feeling you have though, i guess. People need to just adapt and deal with it, but i dont think there's anything wrong with comparing from previous versions so long as its from an objective perspective.

@whoever mentioned a comparison to pikachu and fox with ledgesnapping. Seriously? you're comparing fox side b to pika side-b? Those are two very different moves. I've also never seen a single decent pika player opting for side-b to snap to the ledge when they could easily just up-b snap. I'd argue Pika has a better recovery than fox and has really good gimping power anyway. Pika can use side b AND Up-b. If anything you should compare pika up b and fox side-b. pika has a pretty decent up b if you know how to aim for ledge and its not the easiest thing to edgeguard either.

About the mewtwo comments - totally think that M2 needed more stuff adjusted with his neutral, not just his projectile and float adjustment. That fair comes out so fast and Nair is so broken imo.

In general i'm tired of all the jank from chaingrabs, low cd projectiles, low cd aerial spamming, recoveries from blast zone borders, and lack of counterplay against some of the characters who can just mindlessly spam certain moves to get results. I'm super happy with 3.5 so far and i think it'll be a good healthy balance patch for the game.

Who do you know in your local scene that places top consistently with M2? Yeah. He wasn't a pick up and instawin. I don't understand. Let a character with potential remain potent by delivering minor nerfs, not complete overhauls to the Meta

 

[Stalled]

Just here to say that ZSS's blaster was waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too strong. Also, lol at people complaining about m2/diddy/lucas nerfs.

 

[MagnesD3]

I agree we need playable Ridley to get the balance we want :D (dreamz..)

 

[Azureflames]

Who do you know in your local scene that places top consistently with M2? Yeah. He wasn't a pick up and instawin. I don't understand. Let a character with potential remain potent by delivering minor nerfs, not complete overhauls to the Meta

I don't go to tourneys too much cause it's every wednesday in chicago and i live two hours away. My town doesnt have a scene that i'm aware of... I play on netplay a lot though and have ran into a few M2's but netplay is hardly a place to draw conclusions cause there's people of all types on there. I dont think it takes a genius to see how good M2 is honestly, and he still sounds like he's really strong. I do know in chicago Kels places top 3 in both PM and melee with locals and he plays spacies and Mewtwo in PM. Here's a match with him vs Gravy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EeGb3U6DR5c

He's a good smasher but not even the best M2 and still wrecks. Consider that then throw in M2 mains like Emukiller and m2k. I dont have a lot of names or examples elsewhere so sorry, but i have seen m2 on stream and netplay games and every time i see someone get projectile spammed, tele nair'd, or Bair walked across the stage to the blast zone without M2 having any trouble getting back to stage, along with whoopwhoop stalling it just makes me cringe. It honestly just makes the game hard to watch and makes it all just boring when you have nothing but characters like mewtwo, lucas, sonic, diddy, and link.

He dominates and has strong options that needed adjusting. I may not be super amazing at smash, but dont take my words as some dummy who doesnt know anything. Its a general concensus anyway that M2 was a tad too strong in many ways with his options. If you honestly can't see how strong M2 is/was and think it was w/e than you're just blinding yourself to anyone elses perspective.

If we just "let potential remain potent" then the metagame would just be limited to like...5 characters or just ride the strugglebus forever. PM has been aiming to support character diversity along with a healthy competitive environment. I mean...does anyone TRULY beat the mewtwo MU in 3.02? I havnt heard of anyone saying that it wasnt ridiculously one sided or at least not incredbily difficult and infuriating. You just sound salty and are acting incredibly subjective about it when in actuality M2 will still do pretty well in the meta once people stop complaining and adjust to the changes. People all across the board agree that M2 was too strong

 

[Time/SpaceMage]

Diddy with one banana sounds so much more approachable and less daunting to pick up. I've stayed far away from learning him because of how centralized he was on AGT, but now I'm a lot more interested in him.

 

[mimgrim]

Food for though:

Don't think of the changes in 3.5 as a balance patch.

Think of it instead as a design patch.

Instead of comparing "buffs"/"nerfs" from 3.02 to 3.5 and just how the character compare from past iteration to current one think of the overall change in design Project M has taken for 3.5 and how the characters now fit this overall design.

 

[Roxas215]

@ Fortress im on my phone so I can't multi quote. But it seems your under the impression that "adapting" and "relearning" are the same thing. Its not.

Zss play style is totally different now.

 

[Fortress]

@ Fortress im on my phone so I can't multi quote. But it seems your under the impression that "adapting" and "relearning" are the same thing. Its not.

Zss play style is totally different now.

In any case, git gud and learn to deal. You're not going to get anywhere by whining.

 

[Roxas215]

In any case, git gud and learn to deal. You're not going to get anywhere by whining.

Stop acting like an ass.No one is whining. Im debating why I think zss changes were too harsh in a topic with like minded opinions. Im not the only one who thinks zss blaster is useless now. So everyone else who shares that thought are whining and need to "git gud"??? Get out of here with that nonsense.

 

[MechWarriorNY]

...That's a lie because whining is exactly what you just did, thank you for demonstrating so that people may know better in advance.

Can we get a lock soon? This thread has devolved into needless vitriol and insult-throwing over nothing, and the original point of it has kinda decayed lol.

 

[Shell]

I've been looking for a place to air my opinions, and this seems like a decent one.

[....]

That brings me to the other point here... If this balance update was released a month or 2 ago (possibly sacrificing some of the additional content until later), it would still be an issue, but people would not have had much else to play, so they would have been more likely to accept the changes and move on. but releasing it a week before a very major release that a lot of people (especially the crucial new players) are excited about? I really can't see the logic behind that. PM and SSB4 have different audiences, but you have to realize that there's at least a decent chunk of overlap in the audiences here.

[...]

This is a matter of some weight that we have considered in the months following v3.02’s release.

Project M’s community is diverse, to say the least. It is made up of current and past players of every other Smash title, of pretty much every skill level, not to mention some players that came into PM as their first Smash experience.

The question we had to ultimately ask ourselves was “Who is going to stick around and play Project M when there is something newer and shinier coming out? What crowd will keep this wonderful scene alive a month from now, and a year from now? Maybe even a decade from now?” The PM community is a testament to the fact that players can and will support multiple titles concurrently, so it’s not an issue of some fallacious mutually exclusive choice between games, especially when PM is different enough from other Smash titles that it’s not really vying for the same gameplay niche. However, there still has to be something enduring enough about Project M in and of its own right that brings people back for more.

So what is that spark? And to what segment of the community do we hone that spark towards? To me, we’re set apart from Brawl & S4 by being a game that promotes fast, aggressive, technical play, and we’re set apart from Melee by various gameplay twists too numerous to list, and perhaps most importantly by our expanded roster, which has been iteratively tuned by a competitively-minded team and community. And we’re set apart from Smash 64 by pretty much everything (luv u, though, SSB64).

The segment of the PM community that we thought would be the most likely to continue to support the scene down the road is the hardcore audience of dedicated, competitive Project M fans: the people that really do appreciate the leanest, most competitive experience and commit to the long haul… and this update has been prepared with special care for that audience, though we obviously still value our more casual players as well.

With that said, in the short term even the most dedicated PM fans are probably going to take a little break and devote themselves to checking out what the new S4 has to offer, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Heck, much of the PM development team will be doing exactly that. Like I said, the notion that smashers can only enjoy and support one title at a time is an old, flawed idea perpetuated by the immature and the insecure.

So with the realization that there were still some old fundamental criticisms of PM that remained unaddressed instead of stressing out about losing public interest in the short-term we’ve redoubled our commitment to a long-term plan that we believe will take us to the fairest, tightest PM rendition possible, one which attracts and maintains the largest number of devoted competitive players. And we’re executing that plan as promptly as possible with a big update rather than doing it incrementally because we haven’t lost sight of getting to a stable end product – even though we love to tinker we’re excited for that, too.

In summary, yes we may have lost some more new players in the short term due to the timing and nature of this update but ultimately we feel that we’ve made the best call for PM’s long term success.

 

[Deleted member]

In any case, git gud and learn to deal. You're not going to get anywhere by whining.

You do realize that the community's feedback, aka "whining," is exactly what led to all these changes in the first place, right?

 

[HK_Spadez]

Dedede was widely considered to be just plain bad, but he got nerfed instead of buffed? Why was Jigglypuff virtually unchanged when she was one of the worst? Why did Ice Climbers get nerfs when they were also considered one of the worst? Who was dominating tournaments with Yoshi to justify nerfing him? And nerfing his recovery? Was he not already gimpable enough as soon as he lost his double jump? (I really felt that he was in a good place already.) Was Kirby's down-B such a problem as to warrant nerfing? These are just a few examples.

When I look at the changelog, the overwhelming majority of characters' changes are nerfs rather than buffs (yes, there are some buffs, but they are much less common). But despite some particular changes that were very questionable, in terms of the big picture, I believe that there needed to be a lot more buffs to go with the nerfs. And so I get to the main point of this thread...

I think balance should be achieved by toning down exceptionally strong characters and then bringing weak characters up to parity--not by essentially nerfing everyone and everything. The benefit of meeting in the middle with nerfs and buffs means that you don't have be as extreme when going in either direction, so the changes don't feel as extreme. I feel there's a bigger margin for error when only going one way or the other.

I been meaning to bring this up as well. Why in the world were the lower teir charcaters nerfed? Before 3.5 came out I started messing with yoshi and I main lucario. Both got hit with the nerf hammer when it seems completely unjustified. Noone was doing particularly well or dominating with these characters. hell barely anyone played yoshi in PM. so was kind of expecting some sort of buff.

its like waiting all night for an xmas present and being given coal the next morning for no apparent reason. I understand toning down certain chars but the way u toned down some of the "s teirrs" doesnt make sense either. u guys destroyed mewtwo. Wrecked sonic. Crapped on pit. but barely toned down fox, link, mario? Idk. Time will tell but I hope these changes arent final. Cause some chars in this game need some serious help. cough olimar/jiggly. but didnt get any.while other chars which were barely surviving got nerfed.

 

[MagnesD3]

Only thing I want for yoshi is the recovery part of his egg toss...

 

[kaizo13]

3.5 is definitely a step in the right direction in terms of PM's longevity.

3.0 was quickly becoming stale due to how over the top characters were. With unlimited options, safe long range recoveries, unpunishable attacks, auto-combos, unnecessary kill throws....it quickly lost it's appeal to viewers in under a year, something that Melee still has going for it after 13 years.

obviously the approach that 3.0 took was a faulty one. Anyone trying to defend it, or say that 3.5 lost all of the good things that PM had...clearly
is incapable of comprehending that the future of PM was at stake and these changes were necessary for PM's long term success.

 

[FlamingForce]

. Noone was doing particularly well or dominating with these characters.

I dunno about Yoshi but Mr.R demolished every single tournament that he entered using Lucario, which includes bopping Amsah on multiple occasions and taking out Ice at a tournament in Germany

 

[IronChar]

....can't wait till 3.5 tournament games show up on youtube...


will their be a bugfix type of patch release before end of year?

 

[ZombieBran]

Mewtwo was not as OP as everyone claimed and poor zelda is crippled.

Wrong and wrong.

Mewtwo was that damn stupid before.
Zelda is okay. I think what happened to teledash was really unnecessary but every other change is justified given the overall nerfs for the rest of the cast.

 

[Roxas215]

Lol the entire zss board is in unison that 3.5 zss is awful. Sighs.

 

[Fortress]

You do realize that the community's feedback, aka "whining," is exactly what led to all these changes in the first place, right?

Feedback that was more constructive than "the new ZSS sucks and I hate her", sure.

 

[Stalled]

You do realize that the community's feedback, aka "whining," is exactly what led to all these changes in the first place, right?

Actually the fact that there was a huge imbalance between the top tiers and the rest of the cast as well as the fact that much of the cast possessed polarizing tools and the general power creep are what led to these nerfs.

 

[Bleck]

So with the realization that there were still some old fundamental criticisms of PM that remained unaddressed instead of stressing out about losing public interest in the short-term we’ve redoubled our commitment to a long-term plan that we believe will take us to the fairest, tightest PM rendition possible, one which attracts and maintains the largest number of devoted competitive players.

I'm reading this and all I'm hearing is "alright here's why we nerfed everyone but Fox" and I gotta say it makes a lot of sense

 

[shairn]

Wrong and wrong.

Mewtwo was that damn stupid before.
Zelda is okay. I think what happened to teledash was really unnecessary but every other change is justified given the overall nerfs for the rest of the cast.

Isn't teledash just better now? From using it, it feels a lot more versatile and intuitive.

 

[Shmoopy]

Not completely sure if this was PM3.5 or just 2.0 but I know they buffed ROB, Ivysaur, and Falco, but kinda nerfed:
Game & Watch - removing the parachute(he needs the more open recovery, he's frail)
Olimar - just feels heavier, and plucks pikmin slower

 

[FireBall Stars]

People tend to not like having their tools being toned down, that's normal. But what really matters for 3.5 right now is how much fun it will provide in the long run.

It is needed to take into account the opponents point of view along with the user's. I'm sure that after the sadness of the nerfs to your character, after playing for some more time, you'll see that you're having more fun and getting way less frustrated as nerfs to other characters allow you to do more and feel less fear of taking action.

It's more important and fun in the long run to have a more interactive experience, a neutral game much closer to be actually neutral, than an incredibly useful move, amazing recovery or 100% guaranteed combo. Not only it makes the fights more interesting but also contributes to a deeper metagame and better balance between risk and reward.

Also remember, now you guys have debug mode, the ability to analyze everything frame by frame. If you find any big inconsistency that just doesn't fit that objective behind PM 3.5, don't hesistate to investigate further and bring the results to us, we want to hear you and that's part of why we wanted to bring the mode to 3.5 so much.

 

[MechWarriorNY]

The eternal and non-negotiable end to this kind of discussion is just two words...

 

[Raijinken]

One design philosophy that I've noticed in Dota, is that until you can think of a way to make a character tournament-valid, there is a certain amount of sense in hindering their ability to be a nuisance in low-level play, as such changes are unlikely to affect tournament play anyway.

That said, I, too, was disappointed in the number of nerfs. But it's also too soon to really make a call, we'll have to give it more time to see what was really a nerf and what wasn't.