Is a Melee like game the way to go?

[Vkrm]

The savior has arrived.

 

[| Big D |]

If it weren't for tripping, the Brawl meta game would not have advanced nearly as far as it did. We would likely see top level play showing matches similar to 2010 styles and reads. Because of tripping it took players much less time to realize the importance of walking. It's everyone's first instinct to run everywhere, that's why having a means to discourage dashing is optimal. There is a 1% chance of tripping. If you really want to make a fuss, then I direct your attention to the support ghosts on Yoshi's Island. Where there is a higher percent and could potentially alter stocks in every case someone can't recover.

Point is tripping discourages dashing, and from that reinforces walking. Having both walking and travelling through the air creates many more means of confrontation. Tripping just encourages those encounters.

 

[El Duderino]

It's hard to take you seriously after attributing Brawl's competitive development to tripping. You see, I have very hard time believing tripping suddenly set off a light-bulb in Smash players' heads that walking is useful . The players that have contributed to Brawl's evolving metagame are too methodical for that, not to mention all the competitive Smash players that predate them.

Let me throw a question back at you, have you considered that possibly 'dashing' was never really the problem in the first place? Perhaps the difficulty of walking, requiring a greater degree of accuracy with the stick to control, is standing in its own way from wider use. Furthermore, maybe that is actually not such a bad thing. You said so yourself, walking has its advantages, so why again do we need tripping?

 

[| Big D |]

Of course it is the player pushing the game to it's limits. The greatest capacity to improve is based upon the decisions made on player interaction. Using optimal spacing and movement tools is how a player creates a favourable situation in which they can force mistakes or bad player habits, as well as creating low risk/high reward scenarios. Giving yourself the tools to not only pressure the opponent but also the ability to control the confrontation is a helpful means of not only conditioning but being able to deal a larger punish.

This is often lost on new players, and likely those coming from melee where dashing was better in every way than walking because of the ability to cancel it with a crouch or wavedash. Having more players understand the RPS game of Brawl not only makes themselves better but everyone in their community who has to play them. Imagine this on a much larger scale. Of course new players may come to the same conclusion on their own, but only after a much longer time period. It is because of tripping where there is an added danger to dashing. In today's meta game, more players are recognizing that they have more tools from walking, expanding on the RPS type situations and scenarios that occur constantly in Brawl.

 

[john!]

i'm picturing sakurai as a pool lifeguard telling children to stop running on the pool deck

 

[El Duderino]

@BigD I agree with part of what you said, but still not the conclusion that tripping is an effective way to get that across to new players for reasons I mentioned on the previous page.

If the dev team decides to try addressing this again, they can do better.

 

[| Big D |]

They could always do better, at least tripping was simple and did not detract from the amount of player vs player scenarios. It does its job very well.

 

[El Duderino]

I wouldn't say it impacted the amount of options players have so much as it conflicted with one of the fundamental forms of movement in the franchise. It's hard to praise it for much of anything with that in consideration.

 

[| Big D |]

It doesn't impact the amount of options, it has only helped new players recognize those options. It is the first step in becoming a threat in one's scene. By doing that it raised the general level of competition considerably and has escalated the improvements on the meta game at an accelerated pace.

 

[El Duderino]

Never said it did, the option to dash is always there. It just unfortunately causes results that can conflict with the players input and intent. Normally I would classify something like this as a game bug, however tripping was intentional.

 

[| Big D |]

Tripping always stems from a dash. It is an isolated form of randomness with an extremely low chance of happening, similar to the platforms on Yoshi's Island. The trade off for that being an accelerated meta game as well as giving new players the opportunity on their own to realize how to utilize their movements proficiently. This helps scenes grow and benefits smash largely as a whole.

 

[El Duderino]

There is no concrete evidence you can point to the supports this idea of that tripping has accelerated Brawl's meta game and has put players on a path to a broader utilization of movement options. Not to be overly critical of you here, but this alleged connection is being pulled out of thin air.

The random factor and probability of it has little to do with it with why I am putting your claims in question. They could make tripping predictable, say every 10 or 15 initiated runs, and I still would have the same criticism.

 

[| Big D |]

Now let's look at Apex 2012. It was a Japan only grand finals. Now let's look at Apex 2013, it was an American only grand finals. Now what changed from 2012 to 2013? The answer is the stage list used in most regions, but most importantly NJ/NY became conservative. Before with stage like rainbow and brinstar legal, players primarily had their interactions in the air, leaving the ground game vastly unexplored. Once these stages became banned however, the confrontations on the ground became explored and those scenarios were practiced as well as all of their derivatives. In order to help them realize the importance of walking, tripping discouraged the already dangerous use of dashing and ultimately led North America to become better players overall.

The proof is everywhere you look, in every scene, at every tourney, at every smashfest, tripping is making the smash community better.

 

[El Duderino]

Yet the counter argument can also be made that tripping contributed to the ground game being, as you mentioned, 'vastly unexplored' in the first place. Not to mention what happened from 2012 to 2013 is hardly evidence tripping facilitated much of anything if it took this long post release to have that impact. Additionally it still can just be attributed to players naturally finding ways to play the game better in this later period. Hard to tie it to tripping in particular, there are a lot of variables at play here.

 

[| Big D |]

On less conservative stage lists, the primary means of interaction is in the air, just due to the nature of the stage as well as the characters who thrive on those stages tend to be more aerial based. However this led the ground game to become unexplored and players facing the Japanese were very open to conditioning as they were unaware of the RPS game they were playing.

Once those stages were banned, being grounded became much more important. Tripping is more apparent on conservative stages, meaning playing on these stages more will encourage players to walk more. The abundance of tripping has raised in 2012, and has always been that high in Japan. That is why Japan was ahead during 2012, but it's also why the US pulled ahead during 2013.

 

[El Duderino]

I see this conversation running in circles so I am going to withdraw after this. This argument of yours is more about establishing the validity of walking than it is about demonstrating the value of tripping. I'm growing tired of reading the same perceived notion that tripping creates better players by devaluing the dash, as if dashing wasn't already nerfed and punishable enough in Brawl already.

Call me crazy, but I like having the dash serve as another solid option to mix up your approach with Smash games in general. Sure, it can be overused in a predictable manor, but all mechanics that come naturally to the player tend to lean in that direction. Again, that is not necessarily such a bad thing. Players, as they develop their skills, are more than capable of thinking for themselves and diversifying their approach without this superfluous slap on the wrist in the form of tripping. For a good number of us it is just one of those annoyances Brawl is stuck with.

 

[SwordsRbroken]

...are people really arguing that tripping is a good thing?

 

[Big-Cat]

It doesn't impact the amount of options, it has only helped new players recognize those options. It is the first step in becoming a threat in one's scene. By doing that it raised the general level of competition considerably and has escalated the improvements on the meta game at an accelerated pace.

Again, this is a very terrible way to go about this. There are much better ways that they could have gone about this. If they really wanted players to recognize these options, having the CPU using more of these options would've greatly helped players to encourage exploring the game.

Oh, and having an actual tutorial mode explaining the pros and cons of stuff would've helped instead of just telling us the controls.

 

[| Big D |]

I doubt the developers actually predicted the primary way players would interact, or even thought it was the best way at the time. Perhaps after watching the competitive scene develop and taking notes on how tripping led players down the path of walking, in turn accelerating the growth of the meta game, then perhaps next time they can refine how they encourage players to move.

Of course the benefits of walking of walking would eventually become apparent, but that would only happen over a much longer period of time. Tripping makes that process much faster, and is the reason why the general level of play has increased at such an accelerated rate. It lays the path for new players who are struggling to improve, and most likely keeps them from giving up and quitting. As for veterans it forces them to learn a more effective style of pressure as highlighting the path to improvement.

Sure there may be different ways, but considering the developers could not have predicted the value of walking, and having tripping forcing everyone to realize walking's importance, tripping does its job very well.

 

[Vkrm]

The benefits of walking are obvious to good players, the ones that actually contribute to he metagame. Tripping is pointless outside of the humor involved.

 

[| Big D |]

The only reason it is obvious is because of tripping. I assure you the benefits are not apparent to every top player. I've already shown the positive effects of tripping in local scenes and on a national level. Tripping is the reason we are where we are today. Without tripping we would be much further behind.

 

[Vkrm]

Seriously? Are you telling me the competitive scene needed the benefits of walking spoonfed to them? Even without tripping, trading all those options for a marginal increase in speed is a pretty bad choice.

 

[| Big D |]

They didn't need it spoon fed to them, however because it was highlighted the competitive scene developed and grew much faster.

It is a bad choice, but that's not apparent to many people, especially new players and to a lot of veterans. Tripping just helps people come to the realization. It is an eye opener and a window into top level play. Tripping is the star in the sky that shines bright so that those who are lost may find their way.

 

[Big-Cat]

I doubt the developers actually predicted the primary way players would interact, or even thought it was the best way at the time. Perhaps after watching the competitive scene develop and taking notes on how tripping led players down the path of walking, in turn accelerating the growth of the meta game, then perhaps next time they can refine how they encourage players to move.

Of course the benefits of walking of walking would eventually become apparent, but that would only happen over a much longer period of time. Tripping makes that process much faster, and is the reason why the general level of play has increased at such an accelerated rate. It lays the path for new players who are struggling to improve, and most likely keeps them from giving up and quitting. As for veterans it forces them to learn a more effective style of pressure as highlighting the path to improvement.

Sure there may be different ways, but considering the developers could not have predicted the value of walking, and having tripping forcing everyone to realize walking's importance, tripping does its job very well.

It doesn't take much to figure out how new players will primarily act. In every game it's the same Rush That **** Down tactic all newbies use. It's not until later on do they realize that you just can't blindly rush in and expect to win. Then there's the problem that Brawl stages in particular are freaking huge. If you want to cover ground, you're going to want to run. Reducing stage size would make walking all the more important, especially in the zoning aspect of the game.

And if they could not have predicted the strategic value of walking, Nintendo should've picked a much better team that knew what the hell they were doing (and it looks like they're fixing that).

Quite frankly, Sakurai and co. have a lot of things that they need to refine and possibly redefine for Smash 4.

 

[| Big D |]

Tripping discourages dashing, it doesn't outright restrict it, basically use it only when you need to.
Brawl's stages are a lot smaller than you may think, it only appears big because of the camera angle at times, for example smashville is actually smaller than battlefield. There are many things that developers don't predict, it's the same in every game. However perhaps by luck did they include tripping and encourage the optimal movement. New players to the scene learn much faster because of tripping the benefits of walking. Perhaps players would come to the same conclusions without tripping, but it would just happen much later. You can think of tripping as a catalyst. It highlights how to improve in Brawl, increasing the skill level everywhere immensely.

 

[FalKoopa]

You can think of tripping as a catalyst.

A catalyst which leaves a bitter taste in the mouth. Like KumaOso said earlier, a tutorial would have been much better.

 

[| Big D |]

We can think of better alternatives sure, but keep in mind the dev team couldn't really predict what the best form of movement was going to be due to a lack of knowledge of how competitive brawl was going to develop as well as being unsure what the stage list was going to be. No one knew how brawl was going to be played in 2013 in 2008. Point is tripping highlighted the path for new and old players alike. We can't say it's bad because there might have been better alternatives. It accomplishes an incredible feat as it is, and that is without an incredible foresight.

 

[Big-Cat]

Tripping discourages dashing, it doesn't outright restrict it, basically use it only when you need to.

And what if every time that I need to do it, I end up tripping? Suddenly I'm being punished for going for the the best option at that time.

You can think of tripping as a catalyst. It highlights how to improve in Brawl, increasing the skill level everywhere immensely.

Doesn't change that it's a really ****ty catalyst. Most people just found it to be too dumb to make them want to play the game. You don't see Tekken having random tripping to discourage walking instead of learning to dash and sidestep instead. You don't see Ryu throwing out dud Hadoukens to tell him to stop zoning. The key thing is to balance out the options, not create some dumb mechanic that forces you to use other things. Same goes for stale moves.

As for them not being able to predict, they had two games to look at as predecessors. Hell, they have an entire genre to use as a reference. They simply didn't do their work to figure out where things might've gone and hence why we have a mess.

 

[| Big D |]

You won't be tripping all the time obviously, it's only a 1% chance on a dash, however if you were to trip all the time then clearly you should be walking and walking would be the best option.

It's an amazing catalyst. Most people don't understand how top level play works. Tripping attempts to highlight that for them, it is on the individual to learn from the lessons that tripping is trying to teach us all. The amount of individuals who learn increase because of tripping. Whether everything is balanced or not does not have anything to do with tripping. Tripping just guides people in the right direction in how to improve within the parameters of the game's engine.

No one could predict predict how competitive Brawl or Melee could turn out, even with the previous title to base it on. Those are just unrealistic expectations.

 

[Big-Cat]

You won't be tripping all the time obviously, it's only a 1% chance on a dash, however if you were to trip all the time then clearly you should be walking and walking would be the best option.

It's an amazing catalyst. Most people don't understand how top level play works. Tripping attempts to highlight that for them, it is on the individual to learn from the lessons that tripping is trying to teach us all. Whether everything is balanced or not does not have anything to do with tripping. Tripping just guides people in the right direction in how to improve within the parameters of the game's engine.

Or, you know, you could learn from your losses and analyze why the heck you're winning and losing. I may not understand top level play Brawl entirely, but I have a pretty strong understanding of high level play in other games, and I have never needed some stupid catalyst like tripping to get me to improve.

We don't need some forceful hand to guide us if we've got each other to learn from.

 

[| Big D |]

We don't need it, I've already said this multiple times. However it has increased the rate of development of the meta game considerably. We don't need it to improve, it just increases the rate of which we do so. It also guides new players and helps them start their journey.

 

[Big-Cat]

Out of curiosity, do you have any ideas in particular about how to guide players along the right path?

 

[| Big D |]

I would say so, and I'm going to tell you my story.

[collapse=The journey of Big D]I joined our regions competitive scene back in July 2011. I didn't play any wifi and to this day I have 0 wifi games played on my wii. After 7 months of playing my region and going to tournaments, I won my first tourney. After that I was the highest placing player from our region in the next regional and to get that placement I had to beat the #1 player in Hawaii. From then on I was ranked 1st on our PR. After that I had won every local for the next year, including one where the top player in our neighboring region decided to show.

From that point I became like an observer, I wanted to make my region better. Before there was a distinct gap between each spot on our PR, and the results were almost predetermined. Brawl is a very mental game, and I wanted to give players the tools to improve. I didn't want to tell them exactly what to do, I wanted to show them how they can find it for themselves. I wanted to open their eyes to the RPS type scenarios that occur in Brawl. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for life. Because of my guidance, the skill gap between the rest of my scene has generally decreased, not because of the game taking less skill than before, but because the newer players are developing at a faster rate than before. There were many upsets since then as well as much closer sets than normal. I showed them many things in this regard.

I also entered 2 melee tournaments without having played the game for more than 2 weeks against CPUs. The first one I decided to forfeit because the TO decided to make me replay my sets after I had already won them due to a rule set change. I got my entry fee back luckily. The 2nd was hosted by a different TO where I managed to place 5th out of 30 beating more ranked players.

I owe all my success to the path that tripping has led me on. Without tripping I would not have been able to understand the various options from walking and how that was the best movement method. It taught me to become more patient as well as more reactive. It allowed me to pick up on player habits as well as give the ability to condition other players. It improved my spacing as well as taught me how to punish people out of their dashes. It taught me the importance of stage control as well as being able to eliminate bad habits such as fishing for kills.

I know there are many players out there who can relate to my experience. Tripping ultimately led our scene to grow and become more powerful.[/collapse]

And ultimately my faith was rewarded on that fateful day...

 

[FalKoopa]

@Big D
Do you want tripping to return?

 

[| Big D |]

Depends on a lot of things, but if it did get in it would be hilarious just to see how people react to it.

 

[Kink-Link5]

We can think of better alternatives sure, but keep in mind the dev team couldn't really predict what the best form of movement was going to be due to a lack of knowledge of how competitive brawl was going to develop as well as being unsure what the stage list was going to be. No one knew how brawl was going to be played in 2013 in 2008. Point is tripping highlighted the path for new and old players alike. We can't say it's bad because there might have been better alternatives. It accomplishes an incredible feat as it is, and that is without an incredible foresight.

You can't say anything is bad without comparing it to something better, to make the statement that "It's not bad just because it could be better" is a passive claim. There aren't just better options to discourage dashing as a primary form of movement (I agree that that was the primary reason for its inclusion, rather than just to be something random, and have stated so before), there are myriad better ways to make dashing a situational tool and tripping was handled in an absurdly sloppy way.

 

[Vkrm]

The group of people you think were helped tripping don't exist. Good players favor walking because they don't like limiting their options. Bad players aren't really analyzing the benefits of walking, if they did, they wouldn't even need tripping to see how bad dashing is.

 

[| Big D |]

Well in that case everything is bad because there are always better alternatives. In the case of saying whether tripping is beneficial or not is just to compare it to a Brawl without tripping, which would not have the accelerated effect on development. Bad players may not analyze the benefits of walking, but tripping does discourage dashing. And when they look elsewhere they will see the answer to improving which stems from the difference between movement by dashing and walking.

Tripping guides player on the road to becoming a better player.

 

[Vkrm]

Not many people decide not to dash based on tripping. They both have their place based on the situation. Brawl without tripping would lead to more consistent results and a better balance. Characters that have a better ground game won't have to worry about tripping, and you're pulling this claim of accelerated growth out of your ass.

 

[| Big D |]

I would argue that tripping actually does have a slight balancing effect. On the current tier list, most of top tier is affected more by tripping compared to the cast. With the vast improvement among players who decide to learn their grounded options from tripping, there becomes an increase in skill gap actually leaning towards more consistent results, as opposed to having players not understanding the RPS scenarios and guessing when it comes to those situations.

There is a multiplier effect, even if just a few people learn from tripping it improves everyone around them. If a lot of people learn it the general level of skill increases immensely.