Is it just me, or was 3.02 more fun?

[AuraMaudeGone]

TL;DR- 3.6 gewd. 3.02 bad

Homogenize the right things and possibly end up with a meta where the players make characters S-Tier or not. We're seeing some of that so far. Can't complain much about recent patches.

 

[mythbust4000]

The only way I see 3.02 fun is all the codes like cbliss brawl ex

 

[Da Man]

I recall a recent older version (maybe 3.00) having much less stiffer controls. Nowadays the controls feel so stiff with the characters not jumping or dashing or doing some moves when I want them to, like there is quite a bit of input lag or something. Really hope the controls go back to how they were soon cus this is the main reason I'm turned off from PM mostly now, I do wanna play it as a alt to Smash 4 at times.

 

[GP&B]

No changes between those versions would cause that.

 

[Sandfall]

I recall a recent older version (maybe 3.00) having much less stiffer controls. Nowadays the controls feel so stiff with the characters not jumping or dashing or doing some moves when I want them to, like there is quite a bit of input lag or something. Really hope the controls go back to how they were soon cus this is the main reason I'm turned off from PM mostly now, I do wanna play it as a alt to Smash 4 at times.

Melee, PM, and Smash 64 all feel stiff after playing a lot of Brawl or Smash 4. That's because you're used to the 10 frame input buffer those two games have. It's just something that takes getting used to again.

 

[masterpad]

Most people who switch from pm to melee do it for one of these 3 main reasons:
1) more people play melee, easier to find tourneys.

2) melee is easier to master (I know I'll get hate for this but just listen) while tech may be slightly harder in melee, in pm there are plenty more matchups that need to be learned. In melee you only need to know how to play against like 10 characters, which isn't easy but it's not nearly as hard as the 40+ matchups in pm. Every character in pm is a world of its own and you could spend months just studying one of them. Overall pm has much more to learn and the boundaries are huge, so going to melee where mastering the game is a more realistic goal seems like the right choice for melee players.

3) Project m has little tier differences. Many competitive smash players like going for the top tier characters and dominating with them in tourneys. However, pm is a pretty balanced game and what can seem like the worst character in the game can destroy what seems like the best one. Every character in pm is viable and when these top players see their "top tier" character get wrecked by a "low tier" they get pissed and say the game sucks.

I truly believe that project m is the best smash game to ever exist, there's so much to learn and so many characters to play. I love how there will always be room to improve and I love how the dev team is doing such a great job giving us updates to improve the game where needed. I guess it's not for everyone but im sure there would be so many pm players if they just gave it a chance.

No hate on melee players btw, I'm not saying it's a bad game at all, it's just different from pm. I completely respect your choice.

This is what I've seen from my experience. Im a noob tho so don't take my word for it :^)

"In melee you only need to know how to play against like 10 characters, which isn't easy but it's not nearly as hard as the 40+ matchups in pm."

I agree with you but that also point the huge problem of melee : the power imbalance.
That's why melee COULD be sometimes boring....in pm fox fox is still great but now ike, DK or snake or any otherare great too.
I liked 3.5 and even if 3.6 changes are a little disappointingi still like it a lot (since the game engine became smoother as melee).

I am just wating for the PMDev Team to launch their final release so we could have a stable meta and for more tournaments to include it.

 

[Nefnoj]

THEY REMOVED META KNIGHTS GOOD DOWN AIR.

 

[MLGF]

And replaced it with another good dair

Oh noooooooooos

 

[Stryker]

I've mentioned this before, but I think one reason players will leave is drastic changes to their character. Yes, PM is a developing game, and yes, there will be changes. Those are fine, and small tweaks to keep characters in line and up to snuff are expected. However, when you go about completely changing characters playstyle, it invalidates all the time and energy put into those characters.

It feels like losing a save you just spent straight two weeks playing.
Looking at this from a player perspective, Putting a bunch of work into learning and executing on systems only to have them no longer function is a great way to have your motivation to go back to the game decimated.
This does not feel good. This will cause players to up and walk away from this game. Yes, this is a game still in development, but do not forget it's a fighting game. It's not just some game that gets played casually and that's it. This is a game that people invest huge amounts of time learning, and if you suddenly take away a large portion of what someone has learned and force them to start over, it's a good way for them to say "Eh, I just don't have the energy to learn another character from scratch"
If there was anything I would warn the PMDT about it's this.

So while I don't think that 3.02 was specifically more fun. (Though I did personally enjoy playing more characters in that patch, which seems to be a universal) I think this is a large cornerstone for why people leave the PM community. I've seen many players say "I'd like to play PM. Maybe when it's finished and there are no more changes"

Well, this and the fact that with this kind of ever changing game, they have to be very very very communicative with their playerbase, but they've actually seemed to improved on that since the last time I mentioned it.

 

[Dandy_here]

Never played 3.02 but the only thing I saw was m2 lucas and the most annoying playstyles

 

[Warhawk]

Thought 3.02 was fun at first, then began to feel that the character I played (Diddy) was stupidly designed and playing as him staled some of the interaction in the game with an opponent and then I realized he wasn't even the worst offender. That plus the recoveries ruined the game for me and I quit PM completely. Then 3.5 came out and the gameplay and game flow was so much better that I not only picked the game up again but essentially replaced melee with it and so now I barely play melee anymore because PM is so fantastic. So no, I don't miss 3.02.

 

[Nuttre]

If it's anythying to go by, every 3.5 tourney I played in gave me spacies in my section of the bracket, whereas in 3.02 I had a bunch of different characters.

 

[Juken]

3.02 ws more fun casually because of how wacky things were and easy combos/recoveries were. it's like the stret fighter alpha 3 of project m.

i've been enjoying 3.6 more because of the extra polish though.

 

[Kurri ★]

If it's anythying to go by, every 3.5 tourney I played in gave me spacies in my section of the bracket, whereas in 3.02 I had a bunch of different characters.

It's simple
Nerf the spacies /jk

More character variety is good, but not when it's because matchups are just super polarizing.

 

[Rawkobo]

It's simple
Nerf the spacies

More character variety is good, but not when it's because matchups are just super polarizing.

It's actually not that simple, because there's a lot more to the problem in the form of the entire design of spacies, if anything. That's what's really causing so much "trouble" with the game right now.

 

[Kurri ★]

It's actually not that simple, because there's a lot more to the problem in the form of the entire design of spacies, if anything. That's what's really causing so much "trouble" with the game right now.

I forgot /JK

 

[Quillion]

It's actually not that simple, because there's a lot more to the problem in the form of the entire design of spacies, if anything. That's what's really causing so much "trouble" with the game right now.

It's because the Star Fox duo is brilliantly designed yet PMDev is afraid to make the other characters like that.

And I won't accept Brawl- as an "alternative", since there's a limit to how "broken" a game can get. Plus there's no awesome air dodge in that mod.

 

[Kurri ★]

It's because the Star Fox duo is brilliantly designed yet PMDev is afraid to make the other characters like that.

No they're not. Just look at 3.02, polarizing matchups up the wazoo

 

[Quillion]

No they're not. Just look at 3.02, polarizing matchups up the wazoo

And what makes you think that they can't unpolarize these matchups by increasing the freedom of the other fighters?

 

[GP&B]

That's an incredibly ambiguous statement. You need to elaborate on that.

 

[Kurri ★]

And what makes you think that they can't unpolarize these matchups by increasing the freedom of the other fighters?

You mean balancing them? Well that implies giving them limits, or removing every fighter but Fox.

 

[Kurodyne]

And what makes you think that they can't unpolarize these matchups by increasing the freedom of the other fighters?

if i'm interpreting right, this was already touched upon

If you truly want a game where all characters are fox/falco/sheik tier in melee you would have to homogenize everyone's kit to be basically the same because how can you make something comparatively equal if they are radically different?

At that point, you don't have Marth or Squirtle anymore, you just have another fox/falco/sheik.

 

[Quillion]

If you truly want a game where all characters are fox/falco/sheik tier in melee you would have to homogenize everyone's kit to be basically the same because how can you make something comparatively equal if they are radically different?

At that point, you don't have Marth or Squirtle anymore, you just have another fox/falco/sheik.

I don't buy it. The entire reason why clones play differently is because of small differences.

 

[GP&B]

The entire point of a roster in a fighting game is to give it diversity. To have what effectively amounts to a bunch of Smash-equivalent shotos would defeat the purpose of that. The best Smash could learn from other fighters is to have more universal attributes and options (ie. more homogenized jumpsquats, rolls, spot dodges, tech rolls, etc.), not more homogenized overall characters (design philosophies being the exception).

 

[Quillion]

The entire point of a roster in a fighting game is to give it diversity. To have what effectively amounts to a bunch of Smash-equivalent shotos would defeat the purpose of that. The best Smash could learn from other fighters is to have more universal attributes and options (ie. more homogenized jumpsquats, rolls, spot dodges, tech rolls, etc.), not more homogenized overall characters (design philosophies being the exception).

So okay then! Characters will tend to similar design philosophies while still being enough to make them play differently. If design philosophies mattered significantly, we'd still be stuck with the original 12 with no other characters to add because they'd just be the same as another.

Is this really hard to grasp?

 

[GP&B]

You're the one having a difficult time grasping things here. A design philosophy sets a framework for the game, but still allows characters with unusual traits to exist as long as they don't ultimately forgo or eliminate certain barriers or limitations. The fact of the matter is that shine blatantly violates that and is additionally attached to a character with overall greatly above average traits and moves. To make a character as capable of Fox without adding the same level of versatility is what results in PM 3.02. That is, characters that achieve a lot with little effort. Or Mewtwo, who achieved a lot with very little and had a neutral-defying ability.

 

[Quillion]

You're the one having a difficult time grasping things here. A design philosophy sets a framework for the game, but still allows characters with unusual traits to exist as long as they don't ultimately forgo or eliminate certain barriers or limitations. The fact of the matter is that shine blatantly violates that and is additionally attached to a character with overall greatly above average traits and moves. To make a character as capable of Fox without adding the same level of versatility is what results in PM 3.02. That is, characters that achieve a lot with little effort. Or Mewtwo, who achieved a lot with very little and had a neutral-defying ability.

But the beauty of the shine is that it provides
A: a very even skill-to-reward ratio (a factor ultimately more important than balance at the top level)
B: a high skill cap

In the case of the former, traditional fighters achieve that through top-level balance, but Smash is different. Plus PM offers the high skill cap that traditionals can't aside from arbitrary one-frame links.

But PMDev just doesn't seem to have the creative chops to create something on the caliber of the shine for other characters, though. I guess that's what you get when you're an amateur (definition #1) team.

 

[Rawkobo]

It's because the Star Fox duo is brilliantly designed yet PMDev is afraid to make the other characters like that.

And I won't accept Brawl- as an "alternative", since there's a limit to how "broken" a game can get. Plus there's no awesome air dodge in that mod.

Not...really?

See, having the ability to overwhelmingly win neutral as a character is one thing, but when the design is such that spacies tend to be jack of all trades, master of all of them, then we start to run into a bit of a vast gap in what's reasonable. Jank starts determining what's good and what isn't.

That was the entirety of 3.02 and essentially why spacies were a bit on the "weaker" side. When you design a character to fit the traits of a broken design philosophy where they overwhelmingly win neutral/make irrelevant characters in the cast, the game initially seems fun but becomes frustrating because "improvement" seems very implausible because you have generally free, broken options, so it's hard to make the fundamental jump that you need to make to actually be a top player in the first place.

That very reason is why many Melee top players actually stayed out of the game rather than getting into it, even when M2K and Armada made themselves strong contenders; the game was simply broken to the point of making it irrational to try with traditional Melee designs because it didn't matter in the wake of absolutely horrid design.

 

[Mage.]

I don't buy it. The entire reason why clones play differently is because of small differences.

Okay, so 4.0 will change every character to be Marth but with tiny differences. So now not only do I have the option to choose between Roy and Marth, I can now choose between Marth's 39 cousins. My favorite is Marthelito. /s

So okay then! Characters will tend to similar design philosophies while still being enough to make them play differently. If design philosophies mattered significantly, we'd still be stuck with the original 12 with no other characters to add because they'd just be the same as another.

You're mixing up design philosophies and character themes. A design philosophy is how you want something in a video game to play out, something like: We are going to make a competitive game that rewards high skill and risk as well as not containing overbearing obstacles or traits that are frustrating/stupid to play against as well as containing a game with a low skill floor. A character theme is how a character is in theory supposed to play, e.g. this character hits hard but is slow or this character controls the air through teleportation/hover but is weak on the ground.

All the characters in PM are in their own right a different theme. There is no character that plays the same. The exception would be Marth/Roy but both set up combos/kills differently and thus play differently. The argument in this thread is why the design philosophy can't be "Make everyone S Tier" rather than its realistic approach of "Make everyone A tier" or something along those lines.

But the beauty of the shine is that it provides
A: a very even skill-to-reward ratio (a factor ultimately more important than balance at the top level)
B: a high skill cap

In the case of the former, traditional fighters achieve that through top-level balance, but Smash is different. Plus PM offers the high skill cap that traditionals can't aside from arbitrary one-frame links.

But PMDev just doesn't seem to have the creative chops to create something on the caliber of the shine for other characters, though. I guess that's what you get when you're an amateur (definition #1) team.

You're right. In my opinion, shine is a very high-skill cap ability, especially waveshine or multishine imo. The issue is that its too game-breaking combined with the other traits the spacies have (Wolf/Fox). In design the shine is very high risk high reward but there are so many positive traits about it. I'm fine with multishining and waveshining because that's not easy to pull off, but the shines are just overloaded in positive traits and contain very few negative ones that it's never a bad option. This in turn makes it terrible game balance because there's absolutely no counter play. I'm fine with Fox/Wolf as they are now but they need to be towned down a bit and then IMO we'd have perfect balance in this game after the lower tiers receive some buffs (rip Bowser).

And yes because if we gave every character something the equivalent of shine the game would totally be balanced.

 

[Quillion]

You're right. In my opinion, shine is a very high-skill cap ability, especially waveshine or multishine imo. The issue is that its too game-breaking combined with the other traits the spacies have (Wolf/Fox). In design the shine is very high risk high reward but there are so many positive traits about it. I'm fine with multishining and waveshining because that's not easy to pull off, but the shines are just overloaded in positive traits and contain very few negative ones that it's never a bad option. This in turn makes it terrible game balance because there's absolutely no counter play. I'm fine with Fox/Wolf as they are now but they need to be towned down a bit and then IMO we'd have perfect balance in this game after the lower tiers receive some buffs (rip Bowser).

And yes because if we gave every character something the equivalent of shine the game would totally be balanced.

How to counter play a spacie:

1: Force the spacie player to use manual L cancelling.
2: Wait for that 10% chance of him/her messing up.

And "equivalent of a shine" doesn't have to be a shine clone. What about adopting something like Dr. Mario's SJP cancel from Melee? For Mario, it could be upped to being able to jump out of the starting lag of the SJP, allowing a Wavedash out of it, and using that for combos. Would be reminiscient of the FADC Shoryuken of SF4 fame.

 

[NTG]

How to counter play a spacie:

1: Force the spacie player to use manual L cancelling.
2: Wait for that 10% chance of him/her messing up.

And "equivalent of a shine" doesn't have to be a shine clone. What about adopting something like Dr. Mario's SJP cancel from Melee? For Mario, it could be upped to being able to jump out of the starting lag of the SJP, allowing a Wavedash out of it, and using that for combos. Would be reminiscient of the FADC Shoryuken of SF4 fame.

So it's as easy as having the spacie use manual L-canceling? No wonder spacies are garbo tier in Melee

 

[Mage.]

How to counter play a spacie:
2: Wait for that 10% chance of him/her messing up.

That right there makes your argument fall apart. I have to wait for the 1/10 times he messes to even consider gaining an advantage let alone beating him? That's not good game design. That's why we can't make everything S tier and why I think the PMDT has done a fantastic job so far, save for the few characters that could use some Pit/MK 3.6 love.

I still think Falco is fine because he has enough negative attributes. Fox and Wolf however need some toning down. Not giant bat swings to the head but some nerfs that don't make them so overwhelmingly strong.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Relying on large mistakes to balance a character out is inherently bad design.

 

[Dandy_here]

I think that the best idea is to make everyone good. Not great. Not s tier. But good.

 

[Quillion]

Relying on large mistakes to balance a character out is inherently bad design.

No, it's actually GENIUS design.

It's just that 99% of fighting game developers can't achieve this because it's impossible to play the game at TAS level of precision along with completely knowledge of what they've designed.

Project M doesn't have this limitation because they're building off of Melee.

 

[GP&B]

Again, with no explanation as to why this is the case. Just more proverbial fellating of why Melee is GENIUS with no real understanding or conveyance of as to why.

 

[Quillion]

Again, with no explanation as to why this is the case. Just more proverbial fellating of why Melee is GENIUS with no real understanding or conveyance of as to why.

Putting it in as simple terms as possible:

It's because Melee not only has a higher skill cap that traditional fighters (one on par with physical sports), but it also respects an even skill-reward ratio.

 

[Kurri ★]

Putting it in as simple terms as possible:

It's because Melee not only has a higher skill cap that traditional fighters (one on par with physical sports), but it also respects an even skill-reward ratio.

No, that's another claim. Come back when you have an explanation.

 

[GP&B]

On what basis? What information do you have to support this? Like Kurri said, you're making claims but you are not substantiating them.

In what ways does Melee have a higher skill cap than traditional fighters?

Why do you continue to compare it to sports when there are a lot of significant differences between fighting games and sports involving physical activity (you know, the thing that involves your entire body instead of just your brain and hands)?

Explain how Melee has an even skill-reward ratio. How do other fighters lack this?

I've long grown tired of you making claims about Melee/PM as if they have merit without providing any real backing to them. You've consistently proven you don't really understand how fighting games operate and your reasoning is empty at best. There is genuinely interesting discussion at the heart of this but you have to make an effort first.

 

[MLGF]

I'm ****ing dying here, I just like lurking this topic because of stupid people saying stupid ****, but man that "Melee has a higher skill cap than traditional fighters" has me laughing my lungs off and receiving cancer simultaneously.

This is why I hate the Smash, and the FGC by extension because every game's fanbase does the same ****, they all have pretentious circle jerks about how their game is the best in "teh depth" and "mah hype".

Let me be blunt, you've likely never even played a normal fighter and made your opinion based on more pretentious Melee circle jerks. Like holy ****, I have no idea how you can make crazy claims like that, Melee's deep as hell but it's not the deepest fighter of all time. Games like KoF XIII and Guilty Gear Xrd (Well, all GG's actually) eclipse Smash in terms of technical depth and refined punishes. Both have meter management, which does change what combos are available and what resources you should at a given time, much like Smashes "improv combos". Hell, many fighters have you spend meter to make moves safe to improve pressure strings, which makes players put far more thought into it then Smash's shield pressure. I'm only scratching the surface honestly, and yeah, Melee in some ways does have deeper mechanics (dash dancing is sweet) but you guys are just as annoying as the FGC who demeans Smash. Both are ignorant and pretentious.

So please, quit talking about other games like you know jack ****, Smash is fun and I love it but god damn we're plebs to some other communities and the time they put in their own game. It sounds like you just watched some Marvel after Melee at EVO as was like "Well, this is stupid, good thing Melee doesn't have any stupidly designed characters like Zero! Because my game has Fox and Fox's design is IDENTICAL to Zero, but it's in Melee so it's better."

Smashes' current success has more to do with the fact any idiot can play it, even Melee and PM, at a competitive level quickly while the curve for normal fighters screams terrifying.

Play some other fighter for a year, please tell me all the details of how you get rocked afterward.

And I'm serious about Zero and Fox. The super glass canon with so many tools that the glass is not nearly well compensated enough for all their rushdown and spacing tools? God damn, they're both ridiculous.