Is Sakurai back-peddling when talking about melee?

[MookieRah]

I personally think that every time Sakurai discusses Melee these days is through a fairly inaccurate lens. I say that because I remember reading an interview from him from around the time melee was released, but at least a year before brawl was announced, in which he discusses his design philosophy for melee. For the life of me, my efforts in tracking down this interview have turned up no results.

What I can say from memory, is that the design philosophy of Melee wasn't much different than Brawl. There was no mention whatsoever about catering to a more "hardcore" player base, and for the most part talked about wanting to make a game in which everyone could play together and have fun. So, if that article was legitimate (hopefully someone with better google skills could track it down) it stands to reason that everything Sakurai has said regarding Melee post-Brawl is... well, at the very least deceitful and at worst full of ****.

I think, like many casual players around the time of Brawl's release, Sakurai discovered the competitive scene and didn't like what he saw. I don't think he thought anyone would play his game in any competitive way, and so he didn't try to limit things that allowed Melee to be such a technical and deep fighter during development.

 

[-Philip Coast Philip-]

I've gotten a similar sense of this.

In addition to that article, I think in a couple places he basically said his philosophy was "fun is winning," and "if everyone can win then we'll all have fun." He then made a game which tries hard to deter you from 'winning'.

He takes the philosophy that 'the activity is fun, winning comes after' and reverses it.

 

[1MachGO]

Well its ultimately speculation without evidence.

It is worth noting that the changes in smash (like many franchises) have reflected changes in the video game industry as a whole. Appealing to the "masses" is something that really began with the last console generation (The wii is the embodiment of mass-marketing).

Back in the day, the relationship between developers and consumers was very different. Developers made products they believed in and if they were successful, fanbases developed around them. Now the relationship is almost equal (if not the other way around). The importance of online gaming and the advent of the information age calls for a different approach: mainstream games are now made for fanbases.

The changes between Melee and Brawl reflects the "casualization" and mass marketing AAA developers have done since the last console generation. I mean, look at the old Resident Evil or Silent Hill games compared to their latest sequels. Do you think the developers were trying to make a game anyone could get into when they made the first Resident Evil? No. They were making the game they believed in. Resident Evil 6 is a perfect example of how the IP has been totally perverted to meet the supposed requirements of the industry.

This trend is even further exemplified by Smash 4. Sakurai has stated that Smash 4 is designed to be the intermediary between Melee and Brawl fanbases. This, to me, doesn't seem like Sakurai has a lot of integrity as a developer. If Brawl was the closest thing to his true vision, he literally should have made Brawl 2. But again, the software needs to be designed for fanbases. The funny thing is that this fanbase wasn't even established until this year. The Wii U is probably the worst marketed system in recent memory so Nintendo is back pedaling to pander to their "hardcore" fans and make "hardcore" its new identity (Because Grandma sure as **** doesn't understand what the Wii U is). Stuff like the Invitational was nothing more than publicity to sell more Smash 4's/Wii U's and make as much $$$ as possible.

TL;DR Sakurai's vision has become irrelevant in the modern gaming industry. The game is going to be made in whichever way possible so it makes the most money.

 

[Rhubarbo]

My gut theory is that Melee had so much skill depth because HAL wanted to maximize the jump from Smash 64 to Melee. There was a huge graphical improvement, a much larger character roster, so HAL naturally wanted to make the mechanics that much deeper. Honestly, the jump from Smash 64 to Melee feels like the only substantial evolution within the Smash franchise.

 

[Deleted member 212841]

gcyftftdtfyxycyvj

 

[MookieRah]

This trend is even further exemplified by Smash 4. Sakurai has stated that Smash 4 is designed to be the intermediary between Melee and Brawl fanbases. This, to me, doesn't seem like Sakurai has a lot of integrity as a developer. If Brawl was the closest thing to his true vision, he literally should have made Brawl 2. But again, the software needs to be designed for fanbases. The funny thing is that this fanbase wasn't even established until this year. The Wii U is probably the worst marketed system in recent memory so Nintendo is back pedaling to pander to their "hardcore" fans and make "hardcore" its new identity (Because Grandma sure as **** doesn't understand what the Wii U is). Stuff like the Invitational was nothing more than publicity to sell more Smash 4's/Wii U's and make as much $$$ as possible.

Oh yeah, Nintendo is hoping that the popularity of Sm4sh will sell Wii Us, pure and simple. This recent interest in smash competitively is just them trying to do their best to push Wii Us, cause it has really poor sales. I very much doubt you will see any Nintendo interest in any smash game after the first year of launch.

I will say your post does make a lot of excellent points, but I'd still argue that it's back peddling in the sense that just because the world and marketing changed post-melee, it's not as if they were targeting "hardcore" gamers. They were simply making a game that fit their idea of things within that climate. This is a semantic argument though. In general, I still feel that it's disingenuous.

TL;DR Sakurai's vision has become irrelevant in the modern gaming industry. The game is going to be made in whichever way possible so it makes the most money.

Yeah, I'm thinking at this point all of it is being done for Wii U sales. It's dying in the water, and the 3DS can only do so much.

 

[Dragoomba]

Honestly, the jump from Smash 64 to Melee feels like the only substantial evolution within the Smash franchise.

Adding onto that, 64 to Melee and Melee to Brawl were all incredibly drastic jumps in gameplay and system mechanics. Say what you will about Brawl, but, from a casual standpoint, it's impressive how incredibly fresh and different it was from the previous Smash games 7 years later.

Fast forward to present day and for the first time in Smash history, we have a game that isn't a drastic jump from its previous iteration, Smash 4. It feels very similar to Brawl (to the point that it's literally a modified Brawl engine with many reused assets from the previous game such as half the characters' voice clips). It isn't so much "fresh" as it just seems... "improved". I think this says a lot about Sakurai's current design philosophy. I believe he found exactly what he wanted in Brawl, and is content with making every future entry in the series with Brawl's core as its backbone.

Or, it could be just the fact that the game was somewhat rushed to boost WiiU sales. I'm thinking it's a bit of both, to be honest.

 

[Rhubarbo]

Nintendo's present philosophy as a company seems to be "give the consumers what they want", not what they don't know they want. A convenient metaphor would be the recent A Link Between Worlds, which just lets you buy any item you want at any point. Likewise, Nintendo is recycling tried and true formulas - the newest Mario games have been offensively minimalist, in my opinion - that consumers are familiar with and willing to re-engage. This approach, in the context of Smash Bros., would mean more development time should be allocated to polishing features instead of developing new modes (e.g. particle effects>SSE).

I think this philosophy is temporary. Nintendo is trying to sustain its way through an admittedly mediocre hardware generation. Risky changes could lose them secure sales in a time of uncertainty. Soon enough, I think Nintendo will be back on its innovative trail, which has historically given us games like the Mario 64, Ocarina of Time, the Wii, and of course the original Smash Bros.

 

[0-bit]

I'd argue that it's not always the developers' faults that games are made the way they are in the modern age. Games rarely have any form of accidental mechanics or features. These features undoubtedly changed games like Melee, at least from the perspective of players who actively use them and accept them. There is a strange problem I've noticed with many gamers today, and it's their inability or unwillingness to see alternative methods for success in gaming as legitimate. I don't want to call them "casuals" but that's the closest term I can think of to really describe them.

These people probably don't play games as much as us, but seem to want to win just as much. I can't even remember how many times someone has learned about wavedashing or some strat in a speedrun and brushed it off saying "I play fair so this doesn't interest me. This isn't something the developers intended."

TL;DR Consumers have a hard time accepting anything as legitimate if they don't think the developers intended it to happen

 

[MookieRah]

and it's their inability or unwillingness to see alternative methods for success in gaming as legitimate

Not to start any wars, but that is pretty much the definition of a scrub. Casuals aren't necessarily scrubs, and competitive players can be scrubs as well (although you don't see many scrubs in the melee scene anymore). Usually scrubs throw around the word fair, and honor a lot, and typically have created a series of rules they think are obvious that everyone has to follow.

I kinda miss the days where you had competitive players throwing around scrubby statements. Those were innocent times indeed.

 

[Bones0]

(although you don't see many scrubs in the melee scene anymore).

My region must be a bad example then. At every event I hear non stop johns and complaints concerning characters, camping, and run of the mill gimmicks/cheese.

 

[MookieRah]

Well that still exists, I was mainly talking about people that are competitive that will say to your face that wavedashing is cheap and by using it, it shows that you are forced to use a glitch in order to beat them, and stuff like that. But yeah, that is also scrubby behavior, just not as bad xD.

I know this is a super tangent, but here goes:
To any out here reading this, if you complain about X technique or X character you are being a scrub, and honestly you cannot become a better player while having this kind of mentality. It's simply a coping mechanism for your ego, as you essentially are saying "I can't deal with this, so instead I'm going to complain about it." Don't do that! Learn to beat it, as most things in the game like that actually are gimmicks and there is a solution (and it is often very simple).

 

[TobiasXK]

i don't think we can say that Melee was targeted at a different audience than Brawl was or SSB4 is. i especially don't think that we can make the claim that Brawl and SSB4 are an example of the broader trend of simplification for mass appeal as a contrast to Melee or 64, since those were both absolutely mass-appeal titles.

i think when they set out to make Melee—just like with 64 before—they wanted to make unique "fighting" game that was fun for basically everyone in every mode or style of play as soon as they picked it up and for years and years after. alot of what helped Melee attain the competitive prestige that it has doesn't come from "accidental" or "unintended" mechanics, but very meticuously crafted ones which were designed for that original goal of letting the game feel excellent to every player as soon as it was in their hands. the movement was snappy and more or less unrestricted (which is a common complaint among the average gamer when they have to play a traditional fighting game), there's a lot of "black box" stuff like CCing and DI and L-canceling and invincibility frames on moves that will assist almost all players regardless of whether or not they know these things exists, there's wide variation in character feel in terms of running speed, jumping speed and height, falling speed, aerial mobility, etc.

yes, over the years, we've discovered much much more about the game and high-level play incorporates alot of stuff that can be considered much more exploitative or more likely to have been unintended. but that's not the reason that competitive Melee started off in the first place. to every one of us, Melee felt great day one, minute one. that was their design goal, imo, and they nailed it. and that gave a basically universal appeal, with the super detailed and carefully designed engine and mechanics accounting for the well of potential to raise the skill ceiling the way we did.

Brawl and SSB4, however, aren't JUST designed to feel good and unique. they are also designed to address, in some way or another, perceived "issues" with competitive play. and that secondary design goal, given the priority that it has been, was always going to interfere with whether or not the end product had the same magic that Melee and 64 did. cos now the developers aren't just making a good game; they're trying to hardfix specific interactions from previous titles in suprisingly inelegant ways (tight dashdance and tripping in Brawl, for instance—or grab cooldown in SSB4, when you could just avoid low-scaling or set-knockback throws). it's that kind of thing that hurts the games, imo, cos it steals focus from the more basic more important stuff.

i agree with you, Mookie, that Sakurai sounds very disingenuous these days when he talks about his historical design philosophies. he's made claims about Melee being made for a more hardcore crowd and having balanced everything himself and done all of the hitbox and framedata design himself and whatever else. imo that sounds an awful lot like just wanting to take credit for competitive Melee broadly. and on the one hand, yea dude, you made an awesome game. but the weird implication that he foresaw and intended for it to intrinsically appeal to people like us who would push it to where it is now is absurd; not only is alot of the most interesting and clearly intentional mechanical stuff undocumented and completely opaque, having only been sussed out over a decade of experimentation on our parts, but also... Sakurai clearly resents competitive play. so it's not a case of "i made you guys your game, and now i want to make them theirs". it seems alot more like he feels that we somehow stole and ruined a game that was intended for someone else and he wants to make sure that doesn't happen again.

but if he can say "I made Melee for the hardcores and look how it turned out", then it's supposed to inspire confidence that he can and will provide us with another great competitive Smash title. and if he can say "with Brawl, we were trying to capture a more casual audience", then it doesn't seem like a failure as a competitive Smash title but a success as a casual one. and if he can say "now that we have such a wide audience and everyone knows how to play Smash, we can turn it back up", we might be super hopeful that SSB4 will have that magic. and i think that's all there is to it, really.

 

[MookieRah]

@ TobiasXK
Excellent post. A lot of what you have said is very similar to what I think, and you essentially saved me a big post going through the details of my point of view. I will say that I do believe that there is likely more influence regarding the "audience" since Brawl, as I think 1MachGo sums up pretty well, but like I said before you can't ignore the fact that there was never an intention to hit a "hardcore" audience, they were just making a solid sequel to 64. So yeah, when you backpedal and claim it's for "hardcore" players, that's disingenuous, even if the audience they were expecting to play melee was a bit more "hardcore" than the assumptions the market makes now. If he said that he was making a game that fit the players of the time, that would be a much more honest thing to say.

TANGENT ALERT:
I currently feel bad for every person out there working to find AT's in Smash4, because Brawl history has shown that any time our community finds something within time for him to remove it, he will. There were a few really solid ATs discovered at Brawl's first demo, but magically they never made it to release. Now that there will be game updates, I don't expect unintended techs to last for very long.

That said, I don't think there will be many patches to the game, I bet Nintendo will only focus on this for a short while, a year max, because they don't have a profit motivation to keep working on it, nor will the average player as a whole care about Sm4sh updates at that point.

 

[Khawner]

Melee was rushed. If the team making it had more time, it would've been brawl on gamecube.

 

[MookieRah]

I know this entire post is speculation, but there is absolutely no evidence to support the above statement. Just look at the basic mechanics of the game. Also, l-canceling was intentional. Sure, they would have caught a few things that made it in, but at this point Sakurai had not begun his hunt against AT.

 

[victra♥]

It's actually disgusting how miraculous melee is. For Sakurai thinks he had any influence or intention for melee to turn out the way it did is pretty silly.

 

[MookieRah]

Actually, contrary to popular belief, many people like Kadano that delve deep into the game have a different idea on that. All of the crazy frame specific stuff seems purpose built to function that way, and clearly there was thought behind those decisions. Basically, Melee wasn't an accident, just some AT's were.

I just personally think that during Melee's production that Sakurai wasn't actually trying to find ways to prevent the magical stuff that made melee, melee. He had no way of knowing how that would affect the game at a really high level, and instead focused on things that he felt would make a better game.

The thing I find weird is how different the glitch type stuff is in Brawl and Sm4sh are to melee. It's very odd that most of the glitch like stuff in melee isn't as polarising or super bad for certain members of the cast. The worst example of this in melee is Sheik's chain grab, and wobbling. So even though it was rushed, that leads me to believe that they did a really good job of catching glitches on the whole.

 

[-Philip Coast Philip-]

. . . Basically, Melee wasn't an accident, just some AT's were.

I just personally think that during Melee's production that Sakurai wasn't actually trying to find ways to prevent the magical stuff that made melee, melee. He had no way of knowing how that would affect the game at a really high level, and instead focused on things that he felt would make a better game.

The thing I find weird is how different the glitch type stuff is in Brawl and Sm4sh are to melee. . . . So even though it was rushed, that leads me to believe that they did a really good job of catching glitches on the whole.

Yeah I never imagined Sakurai as going specifically out of his way to make Melee the "party" game he may reference it as, the game is just too precise in its design to be seen as 'carefree' or whatever that would mean. "Happy accident" sure, but intentionally a made to be not competitive... I don't see evidence to defend that, but I don't really have evidence to support that he didn't just change his mind after the game was released and he saw how it was being played or something. Either way, I was continually surprised at the lack of quality control for Brawl given that SSBM had revealed bunches of techniques from multiple angles. Moonwalking, jcgs? Did the creators even try combing different buttons like that at once? I feel like if they had tried anything the smash community had done to discover Melee's ATs we wouldn't have Dedede's chain grabs or Falco's laser locks or whatever. It seems like all the focus was on eliminating what made Melee so competitive.

Sure, they would have caught a few things that made it in, but at this point Sakurai had not begun his hunt against AT.

Yeah, preventing advanced techniques by doing things like slowing the game down reducing hit stun or whatever having multiple air dodges in no chosen direction large-area edge grab mechanics that work facing any direction and a character trip probability, etc. It's near impossible to argue those aren't intentional changes away from anything competitive. The fact that smashers made Brawl competitive is probably what helped changed Nintendo's mind for Smash 4.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

From what I have seen from his interviews that I can find.

He thinks Melee and Brawl both kinda failed in different areas.

Smash 4 was his attempt to find a better balance for this.

 

[MookieRah]

The problem, and I realised this in my first post, is that the crux of my argument lies within an interview I read post-brawl release, that was already an old interview then. An interview I've tried and have failed to find. So yeah, I totally understand why people would be skeptical (and they should, I have no evidence presented).

I'm beginning to wonder if it was a translated Japanese article, which would explain why it would be hard to track down at this point (hell the thing might have been taken down by now).

EDIT:
This isn't that interview, but it is some evidence towards some of what I have posited in this thread:

http://smashboards.com/threads/disp...-intervew-wavedashing-was-intentional.162416/
Please only read the first part, the rest is derp and I don't want this thread to go down that path.

This isn't really amazing evidence on my part (this is known by most here), but it shows that during melee's production he wasn't focussed on getting rid of stuff like wavedashing even though they were identified during development. It's also in how he addresses the issue, using the growing gap between players as a reason to remove it in Brawl, which shows a drastic change in policy between melee and brawl. A policy that was non-existant in melee.

I argue that this policy wasn't in melee, not because he had a goal to make it for "hardcore" players, but simply due to the ignorance of what these things could do to the game in a competitive sense. At the time the gamecube was also suffering from low sales, so there is no incentive to make this a niche "hardcore" title either.

 

[-Philip Coast Philip-]

I remember reading this article too, but if you read through the Iwata asks series for Smash you'll find similar excerpts I think.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Ok, so I'm on a computer now so I can talk about this a bit more.

First off the WiiU didn't really need Smash 4 to do better since Mario Kart 8 pretty much made a lot of green already. Smash 4 is the icing on the cake that will make it even better sales wise. Seriously sales of WiiUs jumped up immensely after Mario Kart 8 came out.

I think this topic is very misleading on what about design philosophy of goals, good vs bad design, what Sakurai has said and what can be proven to be a fact with his words. A lot of interpretation and ultimately comes to ask what was really moving backwards and what was moving forward.

When talking about Melee the big thing him and some others even some pros in Melee bring up is the difficulty, which is fair critism when his goal was to make an accessible platform fighter. On casual level none of the smash games fail at this., they are all simple and easy to get into for a platform fighter. When people start to take them a lot more seriously is when the issues start to come up more. The game is noticeably harder even at a casual level, if his goal was an an accessible fighter, making it also harder kinda goes against that if to get to that power you need to master a lot of technical abilities.

Melee is the most difficult of the smash games, by far to get into and play at a top level. But is all of this needed and does it offer to the game as intended? I still and will probably always say L-Canceling is a terrible mechanic over just setting endlag appropriately across the board.

This is overall what I see when he was talking about in terms of raw gameplay. Smash 4 overall added more options and added more reward for landing an offensive hit. He's not even against ATs at all. DACUS is still in smash 4 like it was in Brawl, you can't do it on the 3DS because no C-stick. You can Dash Dance in this game in a way, more inputs required and it seems a bit more even in terms of what it does for the cast on a whole. Pivoting is crucial in this game and given the other fighters Namco Bandai have done I'm more inclined to believe this was intentionally added since Tekken literally has something similar.

What is taking steps back is trying to replicate Melee in it's entirety like Project M does without thought of if the mechanics were a good idea in the first place. Just trying to make a carbon copy of Melee without adjusting the mechanics is moving backwards. Wavedashing is a major tech I see it's removal as being a step forward to readd it, but you can't have Brawl Airdodge with Wavedashing, since Smash 4 took extra steps to punish you for trying to airdodge into the ground.

I would say overall, Brawl did step back in a lot of areas, some improvements and definitely easier to play. Smash 4 I think is a lot better than Brawl in terms of learning from the past and taking steps forward. Custom movesets add depth and improve gameplay. Fast ground movement and sets being a lot shorter than Brawl is a step forward. Making aerials auto cancel over using L-canceling for it is a step forward. This game does have a Brawl feel to it, but it's not the same and it's a vast improvement.

Melee to Brawl had a lot more steps backwards, Brawl to Smash 4 had a lot more steps forward.

 

[MookieRah]

A lot of interpretation and ultimately comes to ask what was really moving backwards and what was moving forward.

Actually no, I never brought this up. This is an entirely different subject. I'm not discussing game design, nor am I discussing Brawl vs Melee, Sm4sh vs Melee, as games or etc. I draw comparisons for the sake of my argument, but I'm not discussing their merits. This is a speculation thread about whether or not Sakurai is being disingenuous when he talks about melee post-Brawl.

When talking about Melee the big thing him and some others even some pros in Melee bring up is the difficulty, which is fair critism when his goal was to make an accessible platform fighter. On casual level none of the smash games fail at this.

Precisely one of my points.

When people start to take them a lot more seriously is when the issues start to come up more.

Even when you take Brawl seriously, it becomes difficult. That is the nature of competitive play. You can't expect to just jump into competition and do well without putting in the effort. Brawl had considerably less tech skill than melee, but I would assume the people at the top were quite a bit better than the rest.

The game is noticeably harder even at a casual level

It's faster. That's it! It's not noticeably harder than the other games at a casual level. Yeah, maybe controlling Fox is a bit rough (I remember he was unwieldy back in the early days) but you had tons of other characters that weren't.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

In terms of how he talks about, I don't think Sakurai has outside of people trying to nitpick him too much. He's talked good things about Melee even with Brawl he has the done the same for the good and bad.

Melee doesn't fail at being accessible, but it is noticeably harder and from what I have asked people trying to go back to it, i'be heard similar.

I don't agree it's just the speed. The fall speed, grabbing the ledge, grabbing items, it's all a lot harder even casually.

Still I maintain it doesn't fail at this, or that hard work should be thrown aside when taking a game seriously. What I question is if it is necessary. For areas of Melee I maintain for parts of it, no.

This is what Sakurai was probably referring to.

 

[MookieRah]

Look, you are going on a tangent with this thread. This isn't a debate about game design of Brawl VS Melee, this is simply a discussion on Sakurai and how he discusses melee in the past tense. Is he or is he not being disingenuous when he claims that he refers to melee as being made for "hardcore" players is the question, not whether or not he thinks there were good or bad qualities to melee or brawl. I don't care about him discussing issues he has with melee in hindsight, those are his feelings, but claiming something that isn't true in some way to adjust the way everyone feels about melee now is something that... well, it annoys me a little.

That said, here is an extra bit of tangent for you. I have it in a spoiler tag as to not pollute the thread.

Spoiler

I don't agree it's just the speed. The fall speed, grabbing the ledge, grabbing items, it's all a lot harder even casually.

Well speed was a general sense, which included fall speed, but the rest are valid.

The thing is, if you took a portal back when melee is released, you wouldn't hear anyone make these criticisms. The idea that these things are problematic exists only in the realm of this being a developed competitive game, and it makes the game more difficult to play at a high level.

I remember back before I knew of the competitive scene, and how I played the game competitively against friends and anyone I heard that played the game, none of those qualities were even a thing I thought about, because at a casual level you aren't required to master all of that stuff. In the beginning you just sorta got back on stage, not being too concerned with sweet spotting it all the time. Hell, my friends didn't even know you could z grab items, but that didn't make us think that it was poorly implemented or too hard. Yeah, it's hard compared to brawl, but honestly everyone had to deal with that unilaterally in melee, so ultimately the point your making is moot.

The only part of the argument regarding the difficulty would come from people who have literally never learned a controller or played any action/platformer console games. To that end, Brawl isn't significantly easier to control on a base level than melee. You don't have to be a master to be able to play through single player, or hell, simply enjoy the game.

Basically, my point with this tangent is to say Sakurai was trying to solve a problem that wasn't there in the first place with Brawl, and in many aspects Sm4sh.

 

[Tagxy]

Oh goodness, threads like these and posts in them are why peeps are starting to think the melee community is crazy. Obviously its not but this thread isnt doing any favors, some of the stuff in here sounds like 9/11 truther stuff. Almost feel like posting this on reddit, but in any case bookmarked for hilarity and perhaps future use.

 

[MookieRah]

Really? 9/11 truther? That's quite, quite extreme. For one, it's not a conspiracy if it involves one person. I'm only asserting that Sakurai is being disingenuous, based off of what he has said in the past compared to what he says now. I'm not making an extraordinary claim that would require extraordinary evidence. I'm not asking people to "disprove" me either, as you cannot disprove a negative. I also acknowledge that this is purely speculation, as we will never have a chance to have a truly candid conversation with Sakurai to actually find out the truth.

To restate my position, if you take everything Sakurai has said about his games on the whole, I personally don't think that he should make a claim that Melee was geared to hardcore players. I think there is enough evidence to suggest that he was just trying to make a really good game at the time, and was not trying to appeal to any other group than the typical nintendo audience.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Look, you are going on a tangent with this thread. This isn't a debate about game design of Brawl VS Melee, this is simply a discussion on Sakurai and how he discusses melee in the past tense. Is he or is he not being disingenuous when he claims that he refers to melee as being made for "hardcore" players is the question, not whether or not he thinks there were good or bad qualities to melee or brawl. I don't care about him discussing issues he has with melee in hindsight, those are his feelings, but claiming something that isn't true in some way to adjust the way everyone feels about melee now is something that... well, it annoys me a little.

That said, here is an extra bit of tangent for you. I have it in a spoiler tag as to not pollute the thread.

Spoiler

Well speed was a general sense, which included fall speed, but the rest are valid.

The thing is, if you took a portal back when melee is released, you wouldn't hear anyone make these criticisms. The idea that these things are problematic exists only in the realm of this being a developed competitive game, and it makes the game more difficult to play at a high level.

I remember back before I knew of the competitive scene, and how I played the game competitively against friends and anyone I heard that played the game, none of those qualities were even a thing I thought about, because at a casual level you aren't required to master all of that stuff. In the beginning you just sorta got back on stage, not being too concerned with sweet spotting it all the time. Hell, my friends didn't even know you could z grab items, but that didn't make us think that it was poorly implemented or too hard. Yeah, it's hard compared to brawl, but honestly everyone had to deal with that unilaterally in melee, so ultimately the point your making is moot.

The only part of the argument regarding the difficulty would come from people who have literally never learned a controller or played any action/platformer console games. To that end, Brawl isn't significantly easier to control on a base level than melee. You don't have to be a master to be able to play through single player, or hell, simply enjoy the game.

Basically, my point with this tangent is to say Sakurai was trying to solve a problem that wasn't there in the first place with Brawl, and in many aspects Sm4sh.

You can't look at past smash without addressing this.

You think issues he had in melee weren't an issue, he did and I agree with him. Melee on every level is harder, and I think that can be an issue at each level of gameplay. You claimed he is on an AT hunt and I pointed out he left or readded, to which I have learned recently he readded Crouch Cancelling without the low percent/everything else that was stupid about it in Melee with it.

If you are trying to address and look at him including an interview you can't find in regards to Melee in how he talks down about it, what are you looking at?

 

[MookieRah]

Read Iwata Asks Volume 2. If you don't want to go through that effort, here are some snippets.

Spoiler

Iwata Asks V:2

Iwata
I’m not trying to say that Smash Bros. isn’t meant for beginners and, in fact, development of the original Smash Bros. began with the idea of making a game that people unfamiliar to gaming could come to enjoy it just as much as everyone else within the first ten minutes of play.

Sakurai
Right. That is the main concept behind the Smash Bros. series, and the feature is more well-defined in Smash Bros. Brawl.

Iwata
Also, I think that fundamentally, we shouldn’t try and separate the casual gamers from the core gamers. After all, everyone starts off as a casual gamer.

Sakurai
Absolutely.

Iwata
I think this is because we ignore the passage of time and tend to take a snapshot solely of the present when we talk about these things. But it’s different. People that love games and are really good at games were once, at some point in the past, casual gamers themselves. That’s why it’s so important to make sure that you continue to bring in new gamers. If you don’t, there will come a day when you don’t have any more customers.

Sakurai
I agree.

Iwata
Now that I think of it, that’s something you started saying when you designed Kirby. You were able to make a game like Kirby in order to get people interested in gaming and that it would be a type of game you could recommend to first-time gamers.

Sakurai
Wow, that brings back some memories! (laughs)

Iwata
I don’t think you’ve ever let go of that concept…not even once.

So in Iwata Asks V2, they are largely discussing that developers should focus more on beginners than they do. It is then stressed that Smash Bros has always had a focus of being a game that beginners can enjoy. When Sakurai mentions Brawl in all this, he said that he has only shifted the focus to beginners slightly more for Brawl as the Wii's focus was to bring in new players.

Now lets compare this very long discussion on the open-ness of the series to a more recent interview which can be found here: http://kotaku.com/an-in-depth-chat-with-the-genius-behind-super-smash-bro-530744390
This is the part I'm wanting to address, or well, the whole thread addresses:

Sakurai: I would consider the changes that we're making this time around not as fixes, but that we're changing the direction. And so the vision for the overall balance of the game in Smash Bros. Melee, it was sort of more focused towards more hardcore players. Then when it came around to making Brawl, this was a game that was targeting a Wii audience where there were a lot of beginner players, so it sort of leaned a little bit more in that direction.

So suddenly melee was more focused towards hardcore players, yet this wasn't mentioned in the Iwata asks article series at all, and the main focus was discussing how beginner friendly Smash Bros has always been. This flies in the face of everything he has stated to believe in.

Here is another example of how things are not really stacking up:

Although the pace of the game had to be lowered compared to Melee in order to achieve this balance, we have managed to keep the dynamism because we didn’t have to gear towards novice players like we did with Brawl. In fact, we recreated all characters almost from scratch. Also, I feel on a personal level that this game is more interesting than the three previous games in the series.

So now all the sudden Brawl was geared to novice players entirely, and not just a “slight nudge” in that direction.

It's also worth noting that, if you take what Sakurai said at face value in Iwata Asks, you would have to assume that, if anything, melee was a slight nudge towards those that weren't novices; however, their goal was still to make a beginner friendly game. This to me is the most logical way to think about it, however; if you main focus is on novices and are only giving slight pushes here and there, you are not "sort of focused on hardcore players".

So I feel that basically he is being disingenuous with how he talks about his games, and even the mention of hardcore players is kinda ridiculous given the series has always had it's roots in making a novice friendly game. This, in my opinion, is back-pedaling, his view of melee has changed since the time he produced it.

Also regarding the AT hunt:
Why is it that it's mostly Brawl AT's returning? You don't really see anything from melee. I know you've been arguing about the fact that those things don't need to return necessarily, but he certainly didn't try to design a new feature that would be more intuitive take their place either.

Meanwhile you have this in Sm4sh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeT1rN4MLX0&sns=tw

Wario, in a very ironic bit of karma, also seems susceptible to lots of grab release shenanigans. So clearly, Sakurai didn't care about really busted Brawl ATs or mechanics, he just wanted to remove melee ATs from ever happening again.

 

[0-bit]

Oh goodness, threads like these and posts in them are why peeps are starting to think the melee community is crazy. Obviously its not but this thread isnt doing any favors, some of the stuff in here sounds like 9/11 truther stuff. Almost feel like posting this on reddit, but in any case bookmarked for hilarity and perhaps future use.

I've really seen nothing but honest discussion here. We don't really have a way to talk to Sakurai or the development team directly. That combined with Sakurai's habit of contradicting himself just means that anything we could say here is speculation.

I can't see what was so funny to you or why posting it on the Reddit would ever come to your mind.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Read Iwata Asks Volume 2. If you don't want to go through that effort, here are some snippets.

Spoiler

Iwata Asks V:2

Iwata
I’m not trying to say that Smash Bros. isn’t meant for beginners and, in fact, development of the original Smash Bros. began with the idea of making a game that people unfamiliar to gaming could come to enjoy it just as much as everyone else within the first ten minutes of play.

Sakurai
Right. That is the main concept behind the Smash Bros. series, and the feature is more well-defined in Smash Bros. Brawl.

Iwata
Also, I think that fundamentally, we shouldn’t try and separate the casual gamers from the core gamers. After all, everyone starts off as a casual gamer.

Sakurai
Absolutely.

Iwata
I think this is because we ignore the passage of time and tend to take a snapshot solely of the present when we talk about these things. But it’s different. People that love games and are really good at games were once, at some point in the past, casual gamers themselves. That’s why it’s so important to make sure that you continue to bring in new gamers. If you don’t, there will come a day when you don’t have any more customers.

Sakurai
I agree.

Iwata
Now that I think of it, that’s something you started saying when you designed Kirby. You were able to make a game like Kirby in order to get people interested in gaming and that it would be a type of game you could recommend to first-time gamers.

Sakurai
Wow, that brings back some memories! (laughs)

Iwata
I don’t think you’ve ever let go of that concept…not even once.

So in Iwata Asks V2, they are largely discussing that developers should focus more on beginners than they do. It is then stressed that Smash Bros has always had a focus of being a game that beginners can enjoy. When Sakurai mentions Brawl in all this, he said that he has only shifted the focus to beginners slightly more for Brawl as the Wii's focus was to bring in new players.

Now lets compare this very long discussion on the open-ness of the series to a more recent interview which can be found here: http://kotaku.com/an-in-depth-chat-with-the-genius-behind-super-smash-bro-530744390
This is the part I'm wanting to address, or well, the whole thread addresses:

So suddenly melee was more focused towards hardcore players, yet this wasn't mentioned in the Iwata asks article series at all, and the main focus was discussing how beginner friendly Smash Bros has always been. This flies in the face of everything he has stated to believe in.

Here is another example of how things are not really stacking up:

So now all the sudden Brawl was geared to novice players entirely, and not just a “slight nudge” in that direction.

It's also worth noting that, if you take what Sakurai said at face value in Iwata Asks, you would have to assume that, if anything, melee was a slight nudge towards those that weren't novices; however, their goal was still to make a beginner friendly game. This to me is the most logical way to think about it, however; if you main focus is on novices and are only giving slight pushes here and there, you are not "sort of focused on hardcore players".

So I feel that basically he is being disingenuous with how he talks about his games, and even the mention of hardcore players is kinda ridiculous given the series has always had it's roots in making a novice friendly game. This, in my opinion, is back-pedaling, his view of melee has changed since the time he produced it.

Also regarding the AT hunt:
Why is it that it's mostly Brawl AT's returning? You don't really see anything from melee. I know you've been arguing about the fact that those things don't need to return necessarily, but he certainly didn't try to design a new feature that would be more intuitive take their place either.

Meanwhile you have this in Sm4sh:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qeT1rN4MLX0&sns=tw

Wario, in a very ironic bit of karma, also seems susceptible to lots of grab release shenanigans. So clearly, Sakurai didn't care about really busted Brawl ATs or mechanics, he just wanted to remove melee ATs from ever happening again.

The idea here is that you are making a hypothesis based on evidence you are trying to interpret over him flat out saying anything conclusive.

The only thing we can take from this is that Sakurai prefers making content for casual play, that has been clear from the start for every smash game.

Melee was focused to be harder while being accessable.

Because he realized either they weren't intended, he knew about wavedashing but thought nothing of it. Or it's a something he realized was a mistake, L-canceling/tripping etc.

Nothing screams to me like hypocrite from him.

Now the rest of the Smash 4 stuff,

Dash dancing is back, though it's harder than Melee, more inputs. Crouch Cancelling, the good parts of it where it just lets you live longer vs punishing people on hit.

Pivoting is a huge new feature that is really useful.

Yes there are grab releases back, difference is none of these are infinites and just guaranteed follow ups. There is no Peach grab release unsweetspoted bair lock, there is no Ike grab releasing Wario for infinite time, there is no Marth grab releasing Ness and Lucas. Lil'Mac has a guaranteed KO punch, and UpB. I really don't that this exists or on some others since Marth/Lucina can too fit more characters but they need to use a custom UpB which makes them have a worse recovery.

That 9B jab stuff with Rosalina only works n Sheik and Falcon, both of which can get out of it, though it takes a while because of the DI being weaker in this game. I've testing it myself. On top of the fact it's really hard to set-up in the first place, gl consistently doing this.

ZZS infinite on Robin is a clear glitch.

 

[MookieRah]

Melee was focused to be harder while being accessable.

Wait a second, he never said harder, he said for hardcore players. You are making a hypothesis based on evidence you are trying to interpret over him flat out saying anything conclusive. He didn't say he was trying to make it harder, so therefore your own argument can be used against you, and yes I'm being a bit facetious here, but at it's core you are making an assumption too, even if it's far less of one than I am proposing :-P.

Also, I haven't been able to find interviews with Sakurai before/after melee and before Brawl's announcement, even though I know they existed. The point of this thread is if he is back-pedaling, and so far what we are arguing from is stuff he has said many years after melee's release. That burden; however, is on me, as I'm not asking you to disprove my claim (or proving a negative). I am not the only one that remembers these interviews, thankfully, but until I can produce one for those who haven't read them will either have to take my word for it or not.

Dash dancing is back, though it's harder than Melee, more inputs. Crouch Cancelling, the good parts of it where it just lets you live longer vs punishing people on hit.

That isn't dash dancing in the same sense. It's an entirely different mechanic for the dashes. They don't function at all alike, as you have set lengths that you are bound to (or next to none if it's instant, but that's borderline useless). It's actually more like wavedashing, although you can also influence the length of your wavedash as well. It's a step backwards in terms of movement, as there are less options and each dash carries a lot more commitment with it.

Improved crouch cancelling is indeed nice; however. I really wish it functioned like that in melee.

I know Pivoting is in there, but I don't understand how it's useful. Considering the limitations to dashing, I don't see why you would ever want to do it, as they wouldn't give any advantages over normal smashes. I'm clearly missing something here, cause I don't think people would be mentioning it if it was useless.