Is Brawl more balanced than melee? **Take 2**

[Dark Sonic]

Like most people, if his main loses first round, he transforms into MK, which is what that video was. I don't know if his choices in-game as a Metaknight were on par with choices an MK main might have made, but either way, it's a common situation (main loses, transforms into MK, like power rangers except with MK instead of a giant monster), and he handles it well even as Falcon.

Well, to be fair, you can win Shiek vs Bowser too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8YYUedGAq4&feature=related

 

[Narukari]

I say melee definitly had a greater balance between characters. Even though there were still top/bottom tiers, it just didn't matter as much as individual skill. In melee, there were few people that were inable to beat my falco(main) that were able to beat my mewtwo(secondary).

In brawl, skill still will win over tiers, but the margin for skill is much higher than it ever was for melee. It feels like a child could beat me with MK if I use bowser.

 

[Yuna]

Why did you feel the need to start a new thread on this?

The characters Inui mentioned, they still enjoy disadvantageous match-ups against certain characters in the game. Some even enjoy "counters". Thus, you can main them without secondaries... doesn't mean it's the best choice since you will undoubtedly run into your disadvantageous match-ups.

And this was true for Melee as well. There were several characters who enjoyed match-ups quite like the ones Inui mentioned. The entirety of Top, High and some of Mid Tier, pretty much. What Melee didn't have was a Meta Knight, who enjoys zero disadvantageous match-ups (or one 45:55 according to some). All characters in Melee had at least one 40:60.

So, your "argument" for Brawl being "more balanced" or just balanced is not valid. Melee (and most other fighting games) are the same.

THC, do you actually look into what you're arguing before arguing them? Or do you just assume your interpretation/someone else's interpretation is correct?

If you'd sat down and contemplated your (or Inui's, though he was not arguing what you are arguing) "brilliant new" argument, you would've realized all of this (I'm assuming and being very generous here).

Secondaries were never necessary in Melee either. Especially not going by Inui's logic.

Eh, All I know is I can beat the MKs in my region with D3, I should try Sonic out, There is no sonics in my area actually, so it would be very hard to comp against.

D3's match-up against MK is, like, 40:60. So on paper, it's not hard to beat MK. And all I know is that nobody cares what you can and cannot do. For one thing, we have no idea of the skill level of your opponents.

 

[HeroMystic]

Link vs. MK
Link vs D3
Link vs Kirby

I don't care about everything else, but these are all wrong.

 

[ExCeL 52]

Yes ... Too many AMAZING characters in melee

 

[Skyshroud]

To be honest, we won't really be able to tell which game is more balanced. Melee involved much more technical skill and had more emphasis on the best player, so people could win with characters that weren't as good. There isn't much of a comparison to be made between the actual characters themselves, although it appears that there are many more cheap tactics that can be used in Brawl that are inescapable.

 

[Yuna]

To be honest, we won't really be able to tell which game is more balanced. Melee involved much more technical skill and had more emphasis on the best player, so people could win with characters that weren't as good. There isn't much of a comparison to be made between the actual characters themselves, although it appears that there are many more cheap tactics that can be used in Brawl that are inescapable.

Yes, we are able to. It's not like it's that hard (relatively speaking, as long as we know enough about both games).

Game balance in-between characters is the balance between characters, i.e., how does each character stack up against the other characters? I.e., how far is the gap between worst to best, between the worst (several) and the best (several), how far it is between each character, etc., etc., etc.

It doesn't matter if Melee is more technical. We'll count that in when we compare the games.

So, TL;DR: Yes, we can tell which game is more balanced... as long as we have the correct info.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

Why did you feel the need to start a new thread on this?

The characters Inui mentioned, they still enjoy disadvantageous match-ups against certain characters in the game. Some even enjoy "counters". Thus, you can main them without secondaries... doesn't mean it's the best choice since you will undoubtedly run into your disadvantageous match-ups.

And this was true for Melee as well. There were several characters who enjoyed match-ups quite like the ones Inui mentioned. The entirety of Top, High and some of Mid Tier, pretty much. What Melee didn't have was a Meta Knight, who enjoys zero disadvantageous match-ups (or one 45:55 according to some). All characters in Melee had at least one 40:60.

So, your "argument" for Brawl being "more balanced" or just balanced is not valid. Melee (and most other fighting games) are the same.

THC, do you actually look into what you're arguing before arguing them? Or do you just assume your interpretation/someone else's interpretation is correct?

If you'd sat down and contemplated your (or Inui's, though he was not arguing what you are arguing) "brilliant new" argument, you would've realized all of this (I'm assuming and being very generous here).

Secondaries were never necessary in Melee either. Especially not going by Inui's logic.


D3's match-up against MK is, like, 40:60. So on paper, it's not hard to beat MK. And all I know is that nobody cares what you can and cannot do. For one thing, we have no idea of the skill level of your opponents.

Yuna, I'm actually not arguing anything.

I'm reopenning a discussion in which new information has become available.

I'm staying neutral on this one.

 

[Ulevo]

Ah hell. We do not need another thread full of pure controversy and meaningless trivial arguments. This threads goal doesn't even direct to anything productive.

 

[KORMEGA]

its pretty clear that brawl has alot more viable characters. in melee you had 4 characters dominating tourneys and you had another 4 or 5 who would place decent in tourneys and win form time to time

in brawl you ahve 2 characters that seperate themselves from the pakc in tourney wins,(mk clearly seperates himself) but snake is closer to the rest then mk now if you go by tourney results

after those 2 you have many characters that win tourneys on a consistent basis. wayyyyy more then melee. wario gnw ddd falco marth lucario olimar diddy donkey kong rob pikachu

if metaknight got banned the brawl would be way more balanced then melee to the point that you wouldnt be able to argue the fact.

but as it is now brawl has wayy more characters that ahve chances to win tourneys then melee had. next time you go to a tourney and its brawl and melee look at the mix of different players in brawl and melee, in my region there isnt alot fo metakngihts (long island) there is a wide variety of characters, more then i ever seen in melee, when melee goes on in tourneys i see the same characters being played over and over.

to conclude, my idea of balance in terms of smash is which game has more viable characters to win tourneys and the answer is clearly brawl imo

 

[Yuna]

Yuna, I'm actually not arguing anything.

I'm reopenning a discussion in which new information has become available.

I'm staying neutral on this one.

Fine. You're still wrong. That's not new information at all.

Everything I said before still stands. The same can be said about Melee.

its pretty clear that brawl has alot more viable characters. in melee you had 4 characters dominating tourneys and you had another 4 or 5 who would place decent in tourneys and win form time to time

No, no, what you are seeing is certain really good players doing well as lesser characters. There have always been stellar players being able to do well with lesser characters.

On paper (and in practice), Brawl is much less balanced game.

In Melee, people just chose to tierwhore more than in Brawl. It's just that a lot of those players quit and in came an influx of new players who stick to their lower tiers and do moderately well.

But you won't be low tiers winning or doing very well in any big tournaments (unless they're played by Azen... in select matches).

Also, Brawl has barely been out for a year. The scene has yet to have the time to devolve into tierwhoring the hell out of the game. Might I point out that for the beginning of Melee's lifespan, its results were also very varied? Most Competitive scenes start out with varied tourney results.

But as time draws on, more and more tourneys get taken by the top tiers.

 

[SwordmasterXXXI]

mks dominance ranking is 35 (according to ankoko).

marthss was 55 >_>

Brawl has been out for less than a year while Melee has been out for 7........



It's sad that Metaknight is that close.




Melee is way more balanced than brawl. It's not even comparable. lol




Edit: 360th post! :D

 

[Nintendevil]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iaik3Efwdxw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWMen9KvflM&feature=related

 

[metaXzero]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iaik3Efwdxw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IWMen9KvflM&feature=related

You want someone to cherrypick similar Melee matches?

On-topic: Doesn't really matter which is more balanced. Both are freaking unbalanced character wise.

 

[Narukari]

You want someone to cherrypick similar Melee matches?

On-topic: Doesn't really matter which is more balanced. Both are freaking unbalanced character wise.

Most fighting games are unbalanced. Melee was actually one of the better ones since you had 4 characters that could compete against eachother for the highest rank, and many more below them that were still tournament viable.

 

[B%B]

The problem with Brawl, now that it's been out for long enough, is that there's so many stupid, little problems with it. It's not as if every aspect is completely broken. More so, there are a lot of way-too-easy character specific gayness going on. DDD's standing chaingrab. Yoshi VS Wario Grab. Things like that. A lot more characters in this game are more viable for tourney use, but that only gives an illusion of balance. In Melee, the same or maybe even more characters are viable, you just have to work harder.

Brawl is being played by more people, who mostly started playing at the same time, and with no real learning curve, outside of spacing, balance is really all in the eye of the overall community. EVENTUALLY, the game will be very one line, we'll know how do beat different techniques, we'll know which characters can't. We won't use them. Give it time, Half the cast won't be used nearly as often.

This whole post is almost completely dumb.

 

[viparagon]

lol

Here's what generally happens:
- Falco can do well against Marth! "Oh yeah? well how come there aren't tons of Falcos
winning tournaments??"
- Sheik can do okay against Marth! "Yeah? How come noone's winning tourneys with Sheik???"

it's basically like that all the way down.


QUOTE]

Fix'd for Melee...

marth's dominance rating was(is) 55 for melee (ankoko's chart)

 

[metaXzero]

Most fighting games are unbalanced. Melee was actually one of the better ones since you had 4 characters that could compete against eachother for the highest rank, and many more below them that were still tournament viable.

So you are insinuating that most traditional fighters boiled down to 1-3 characters at high levels?

..........-__- No...

 

[viparagon]

I don't see why people think brawl is the one with the broken techniques... Fox could use a 1 frame attack to infinite half the cast in melee...

 

[metaXzero]

I don't see why people think brawl is the one with the broken techniques... Fox could use a 1 frame attack to infinite half the cast in melee...

...on a wall ONLY (where D3 has that AND 5(?) who can be infinited without a wall). And it wasn't so freaking easy to do (like D3's CG)...

 

[viparagon]

...on a wall ONLY (where D3 has that AND 5(?) who can be infinited without a wall). And it wasn't so freaking easy to do (like D3's CG)...

ummm... no

http://super-smash-bros.wikia.com/wiki/Waveshine_infinite

it could be done without a wall, tho it was harder. It works on FRAME1, is impossible to punish, and can be used immediately after if sheilded.

and woops, it wasn't on half the cast, but still a larger percent than D3s

 

[metaXzero]

ummm... no

http://super-smash-bros.wikia.com/wiki/Waveshine_infinite

it could be done without a wall, tho it was harder. It works on FRAME1, is impossible to punish, and can be used immediately after if sheilded.

and woops, it wasn't on half the cast, but still a larger percent than D3s

It goes until you are off the edge. Technically, not an infinite. Plus the difficulty made it so consistent Waveshines by themselves were somewhat rare (unlike D3's CG).

 

[viparagon]

It goes until you are off the edge. Technically, not an infinite. Plus the difficulty made it so consistent Waveshines by themselves were somewhat rare (unlike D3's CG).

If you go infront of them after you waveshine, you can hit some chars back and forth infinitely. its setups ARE extremely easy, and the only problem is in the difficulty. But should difficulty be a factor in determining the overall balance of a game, or should it just be tourney resulsts?

don't forget about other such tactics, like sheiks downthrow...

 

[Radical Dreamer]

It's not. Not even a debatable point.

 

[¯\_S.(ツ).L.I.D._/¯]

If you want to see why Melee is more balanced, just look at the SBR Final Melee tier list and how close everyone is in the decimals. Then look at Ankoku's Character Rankings thread and see how far away MK is from every other character.

 

[metaXzero]

If you go infront of them after you waveshine, you can hit some chars back and forth infinitely. its setups ARE extremely easy, and the only problem is in the difficulty. But should difficulty be a factor in determining the overall balance of a game, or should it just be tourney resulsts?

don't forget about other such tactics, like sheiks downthrow...

Difficulty should be a factor if the thing in question is nearly impossible. Otherwise Melee Fox SHOULD be banned with Perfect Control and Adventure (SuperDoodleMan's videos) as evidence why.

That form of Waveshining was almost (if ever) NEVER seen in tournaments due to difficulty.

 

[Oracle]

I don't see why people think brawl is the one with the broken techniques... Fox could use a 1 frame attack to infinite half the cast in melee...

It's people like this who know nothing about either game who give the Brawl community a bad name.

 

[Turbo Ether]

People really need to get over the being afraid of random MKs in tournament now. You should really only be losing to better players at this point.

 

[FishkeeperTimmay!]

Balance is a tricky thing to define. It depends on what your looking at. There are three main aspects to look at; top level (dominating characters), viable characters, and top/bottom character gaps.

Top Level:
Melee has 4 dominate characters. Brawl has as many as 3 or as low as 1, depending on how you look at it. Melee would look more balanced there, both in a percentage and quantitative basis.

Viability:
Melee has quite a few viable characters. Many would speculate that anyone in Mid or higher is, but for the sake of simplicity, lets say that only High and above are viable. That is 8 characters. Compared to Brawl, which has 16, Melee looses out.

Tier spreads:
In Melee, bottom tiers beating out high tiers isn't impossible, but its never done at important tournies. Select players defend the lower tiers, and their progress is noted and compared. On a tournament basis, lower tiered characters don't do very great.

In Brawl, the same holds true. Captain Falcons and Link's aren't taking the important tournaments. There is no glaring difference here between Melee and Brawl. Both games bottom tiers aren't capable of consistently taking tournaments.

In pools and such however, I find, from experience, that I'm far more concerned facing a low tier matchup in Melee then I am in Brawl, merely because gimping and comboing allow lower tier characters to take stocks off a few mistakes, where as in Brawl I need to screw up often allow enough damage to happen to take stocks.

Conclusions:
So, the question is, where does "balance" really matter?

On a competitive level, only the characters that dominate tend to win the "big" tournaments. They are the characters you prepare for, master the match-ups for, and practice against. Thus, to a competitive player, the only "balance" that matters is the balance in the top tier. Because Melee has 4 characters that regularly make it to Finals, the diversity to the tournament player is greater. Because the diversity is greater, the metagame doesn't stagnate. Thus, this is where "balance" in a fighter is the most important, and I would clearly say Melee is the greater game.

Viability comes in a close second, but viable characters are used far less, and their higher tiered counterparts often knock them out in the pools. Thus, to a lower end tournament player, who doesn't make it out of pools, or not very far in brackets, this is where "balance" matters the most. Brawl obviously wins here because the number of characters that can actually compete is larger.

As for tier spreads, both games stink on a tournament level. I never really consider the spread important in competitive fighting games, because the only thing that really matters is the highest end. Professional gamers aiming to take the wins won't use these characters, period. Clearly neither game excels in this category. However, I find Melee still wins in the end because the chances of actually overcoming a bad match up in Melee are far greater due to the severity of punishment in the game. In Melee, 4 mistakes can equal 4 stocks. That is never the case in Brawl.

 

[teekay]

Okay, interestingly enough, I am not aware of ANY widely played competitive fighting game that doesn't have a top tier of 4 or MAYBE 5 characters. Here are top tiers pulled from the Shoryuken Wikis for the biggest fighters:

SF3 Third Strike: Yun, Chun, Makoto
SSF2 Turbo: O Sagat, Dhalsim, Boxer, Claw
MvC2: Sentinel, Storm, Magneto, Cable
CvS2: A-Bison, A-Blanka, A-Sakura, C-Sagat
Guilty Gear XX AC: Testament, Eddie, Slayer

I mean I really think this is a pretty universal thing. It makes sense, if you think about it. It's impossible to design a game where this doesn't happen to some extent. The closest thing, I think, is SF2, where I think that top tier listing is still pretty debated (although I am sure nobody would remove O Sagat from top).

Below these top tiers there is always, always a SLIGHTLY larger second tier. These would be the "other viable characters" you see. You will always see these characters placing in tourneys, just not as often as the top tiers.

So basically every time someone says something like, "In Melee, there were a few dominant characters, and then several more that were viable" or, "In Brawl, there are two dominant characters and then several more viable ones," it's not making much progress. That's just how fighting games work.

I don't think it's at all possible to point at the number of high tier dominant characters to say how balanced a game is. I'm not sure how you WOULD figure it out, to be honest, and I don't claim to know whether Brawl or Melee is a more balanced game. I do think the question is worth pursuing, but before it's seriously pursued maybe we should figure out the criteria (I now feel that I'm echoing somebody in one or possibly all of the MetaKnight threads). What is a balanced game? It can't be one where you see a wide variety of characters winning large tournaments because there is no such fighting game.

 

[The Halloween Captain]

Oddly enough, "balance" may vary from person to person. One person may look at the number of characters they can reasonably use in a tournament, while another may compare the highest tier to the lowest tier. A third may use a ratio - Brawl has about 50% more characters than melee, so it should have %50 more viable characters.

Ultimately, it's all about the potential for character diversity in a game. how you define that is up to you.

Fine. You're still wrong. That's not new information at all.

Everything I said before still stands. The same can be said about Melee.

Whatever.

 

[viparagon]

Difficulty should be a factor if the thing in question is nearly impossible. Otherwise Melee Fox SHOULD be banned with Perfect Control and Adventure (SuperDoodleMan's videos) as evidence why.

That form of Waveshining was almost (if ever) NEVER seen in tournaments due to difficulty.

if you want to look strictly based off of tournament results, marth ***** everyone in melee...

 

[Mmac]

if you want to look strictly based off of tournament results, marth ***** everyone in melee...

Except Marth was never proved to completely destroyed the Melee Tournament scene. I just find completely hard to swallow that someone dominates with over half the results with 4 Characters sought to be dominating just as much as he is, and that he isn't even the best character in the game!

Marth having 55% of the tournament results is just faux. Plus whatever happened to Fox and Sheik? I'm also pretty sure Falco, Peach, and Falcon aren't that far behind either.

 

[Fatmanonice]

mks dominance ranking is 35 (according to ankoko).

marthss was 55 >_>

I'm not going to participate in this discussion because I got burned out on Brawl vs Melee discussions months ago but I just wanted to point out that Marth had freakishly good players like Ken, he was ranked third on the tier list, and this was the end result of 6 years and Brawl hasn't even been out for one yet.

 

[The Real Inferno]

On my page setting, the first page of this topic had already devolved into some sort of weird image spamming. My hopes do not remain high.

 

[KO M]

Youko will flip when he sees a brawl vs melee topic like this.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

Idk if it's more balanced than Melee. From what I hear Melee was very inbalanced with few characters being viable. Apparently only rare talents like ChuDat or Azen were able to do well with mid tier characters (or lower ones) and even Azen used almost always Marth in important matches. It's hard to tell for me though, since I never played Melee competitively.

Brawl is a different story. When it first came out everybody thought it was extremely inbalanced but I think it got better. A lot. I kinda agree with Inui's original statement. There are lots of characters who can go solo, possibly more than in Melee.

But on the other hand Brawl has a larger number of characters who are unviable. Obviously this is because of the higher number of characters in general. It's a matter of prefference, I suppose. Brawl has more viable characters but in Melee you could use ~40% of the characters, something you can't in Brawl. Either way, I'd say we should give Brawl more time.

 

[itsthebigfoot]

inui completely forgot wario.

maybe it's cause east coast warios suck

due to this, only one wario places at the level multiple warios should be placing on. seriously, he's a better character than dedede

one last thing

SF3 Third Strike: Yun, Chun, Makoto

no

no no no no no

nononononononononononono

10kensbetter

 

[teekay]

I was copying from tier list wikis. Since I am an expert on none of those games, or any game for that matter, I wasn't going to make my own.

Ultimately, it's all about the potential for character diversity in a game. how you define that is up to you.

This is exactly what I'm saying is confusing the issue. Balance has nothing to do with character diversity. Or, if it does, there are no popular balanced fighting games.

Is chess an imbalanced game? How much "character diversity" is there in chess? There is none. And yet that is probably as balanced as you can get. What if this means balance results from LESS character diversity? Does it? I have no idea. All I know is you can't just say "a lot of characters are played" or "only 4 characters are played" and think this means a game is balanced or not.

 

[OverLade]

Balance is a tricky thing to define. It depends on what your looking at. There are three main aspects to look at; top level (dominating characters), viable characters, and top/bottom character gaps.

Top Level:
Melee has 4 dominate characters. Brawl has as many as 3 or as low as 1, depending on how you look at it. Melee would look more balanced there, both in a percentage and quantitative basis.

Viability:
Melee has quite a few viable characters. Many would speculate that anyone in Mid or higher is, but for the sake of simplicity, lets say that only High and above are viable. That is 8 characters. Compared to Brawl, which has 16, Melee looses out.

Tier spreads:
In Melee, bottom tiers beating out high tiers isn't impossible, but its never done at important tournies. Select players defend the lower tiers, and their progress is noted and compared. On a tournament basis, lower tiered characters don't do very great.

In Brawl, the same holds true. Captain Falcons and Link's aren't taking the important tournaments. There is no glaring difference here between Melee and Brawl. Both games bottom tiers aren't capable of consistently taking tournaments.

In pools and such however, I find, from experience, that I'm far more concerned facing a low tier matchup in Melee then I am in Brawl, merely because gimping and comboing allow lower tier characters to take stocks off a few mistakes, where as in Brawl I need to screw up often allow enough damage to happen to take stocks.

Conclusions:
So, the question is, where does "balance" really matter?

On a competitive level, only the characters that dominate tend to win the "big" tournaments. They are the characters you prepare for, master the match-ups for, and practice against. Thus, to a competitive player, the only "balance" that matters is the balance in the top tier. Because Melee has 4 characters that regularly make it to Finals, the diversity to the tournament player is greater. Because the diversity is greater, the metagame doesn't stagnate. Thus, this is where "balance" in a fighter is the most important, and I would clearly say Melee is the greater game.

Viability comes in a close second, but viable characters are used far less, and their higher tiered counterparts often knock them out in the pools. Thus, to a lower end tournament player, who doesn't make it out of pools, or not very far in brackets, this is where "balance" matters the most. Brawl obviously wins here because the number of characters that can actually compete is larger.


This makes brawl more balanced.
As for tier spreads, both games stink on a tournament level. I never really consider the spread important in competitive fighting games, because the only thing that really matters is the highest end. Professional gamers aiming to take the wins won't use these characters, period. Clearly neither game excels in this category. However, I find Melee still wins in the end because the chances of actually overcoming a bad match up in Melee are far greater due to the severity of punishment in the game. In Melee, 4 mistakes can equal 4 stocks. That is never the case in Brawl.

I think this is a little biased.

Brawl has easily more than 3 viable characters.

Metaknight, Falco, D3, GaW, Snake, Marth, Wario, and ROB can pretty much all beat each other out, it all just depends on skill level. At the highest level of metagame, Marth can still beat metaknight, while in melee, at the highest, Bowser wont beat Fox. In brawl, even at the highest level, Bowser can beat marth and metaknight, and many other lower tier characters can still work well vs. many high tiers. Its just certain high tiers that make these chars unviable, like falco and D3 with their chaingrabs.