Kansas City/Lawrence Discussion Topic

[DYC]

**** yeah. But how big are we talking? Crews from all around the United States or just the midwest? We should also use these tournaments to FINALLY start getting footage for that darkrain combo vid we've been talking about since forever.

We want this to be on the national level. Not the regional level. That's why we are generating the OOS bonus to draw people from exceptional distances.

 

[papermarkis]

What exactly is an OOS (out of state bonus)?

 

[CFMV]

No Markis, I don't think Missouri counts.

 

[Stealth Raptor]

He means he doesnt know what it is (and frankly i am in the dark as well).

 

[Amazing Ampharos]

Okay, either Alex or I are going to be picking it up for the brawl guys this Saturday; we're unclear over which one of us it will be right now (we'll have that information tomorrow). In any case, we both live pretty close to Minor and State Line so the trip will be quite short for the JCC guys. I don't know if anyone else is still into brawl over melee; after how awesome those two JCC tournaments were, I would have thought that brawl would have more fans... Also, don't worry; both of us have roomy basements and will be able to see to there being at least 3 set-ups before factoring in any that anyone else elects to bring.

EDIT: I have a feeling I upset you at the last tournament Xion and do feel bad about pretty much screwing you, but I hope you understand that I really did have to pick Rainbow Cruise there. Your Sonic is too good, and with the stakes of a tournament, I couldn't afford to take any chances. I do hope we'll get to play some at least once more before this summer ends.

 

[cH9hax]

Wow. 371 pages. It seems like there's a well established Smash community in the Kansas area. Haha. I don't know anyone that plays Wii besides my room-mate and I.

Well anyways, I'm cH9hax, Craig. Live in Ottawa and looking forward to meeting everyone.

 

[dmac]

holy crap ottawa.... haha 3 of us in lawrence, but we dont really play much brawl.... i dont know of any hardcore brawl players in lawrence. not that we wont play with ya... just... we really prefer meleeeeeee

 

[SamDvds]

melee ftw! <3 kc

 

[DYC]

gtfo Sam.

Sheesh.

And yes Markis OOS stands for Out of State bonus. It basically means that if someone travels in and wins the tournament they get an extra $500 on top of their pot winnings.

 

[Jesi]

Melee is a game that won't be forgotten easily because of how strong the community was to start with. With time, I actually think the two communities will begin to even out a little, brawl is still super new and a lot easier to play so it appeals to much more people. But Melee will always appeal to the "fighter" crowd who enjoy fast paced and technically challenging games.

Sadly I'll only be able to chip in $5 before I take off for Texas. As for any tournaments on the 9th, uhhh That's my going-away par-tay! So no can do. However, I will definitely return for the melee tournament in October (I've asked that it be on my break week).

I REALLY need to win that OOS bonus, got tuition to pay man....

 

[DYC]

Oh, Kurosaki Ichigo. You shan't be forgotten.

 

[Deleted member]

Of course melee won't be forgotten, its the greatest game ever assembled. But people have to start understanding that brawl is melee's successor and QQ'ing wont change that. Take it from me, i used to hate Counter Strike: Source so badly because they did what they did to brawl, dumbed it down and made it for nubs. But constantly complaining won't resurrect a dieing game.

 

[DYC]

Of course melee won't be forgotten, its the greatest game ever assembled. But people have to start understanding that brawl is melee's predecessor and QQ'ing wont change that. Take it from me, i used to hate Counter Strike: Source so badly because they did what they did to brawl, dumbed it down and made it for nubs. But constantly complaining won't resurrect a dieing game.

Just because something is newer doesn't mean it should replace the older version, if the older version was superior. They are just marketing to the ADD generation. Make it as shiny as possible and count on their miniscule attention spans to keep them from realizing how ridiculously shallow the game is.

Also, you might want to look up the word predecessor, as the word you were most likely looking for was "successor".


And since you seem to think you have a logical parallel to the FPS world for your side of the argument, allow me to give you mine.

I played Day of Defeat 3.1beta competitively for it's entirety. I was Cal-I for three seasons.

If you don't know what that means you didn't play CS competitively and therefore your parallel does not apply. If you do know what that means then you realize that I know what I'm talking about.

Day of Defeat 3.1beta was arguably the best independant mod for a first person shooter ever, with its more realistic recoil and damage systems being a large upgrade from the expandable conefire that CS employed.

However, it lacked the immense popularity that Counter-Strike had garnered during it's time as the only real full conversion mod for Half-life aside from TFC. Obviously there were die-hards on either side of the DoD/CS debate, but that stemmed more from the two games distinct styles attracting a different style of gamer.

It is obviously not up for debate as to which was the more popular mod, as CS wins that category hands down, but the debate still rages as to which was the better game.



Now with that out of the way, back to my original point.

I played Cal-I level DoD for over a year before the game was purchased from the mod developers by Valve. When valve purchased the game from the independant developers the first thing they did was change it from the realistic controllable recoil system to a pure CS style random conefire system. They also introduced a slew of new bugs including, but not limited to, phantom hitboxes and terrible hit registration. They also attempted to perform a somewhat comprehensive weapon physics overhaul (which ruined half of the weapons) in order to "balance the weapons". The reason many of these changes were implemented was to attempt to give the game an overall feel similar to the immensely popular Counter-Strike. A game that many agreed actually had a few things it could learn from DoD.

Within a few weeks of launch over half of the teams in Cal-I had abandoned the game, as it was almost unplayable at a competitive level. While in DoD3.1b the game had once been ruled by highly technical rifle snap shooting, it had now devolved into a mess of spray and pray with the submachineguns and assault rifles.

Over the next year or so valve rolled out several patches addressing many of the bugs and weapon imbalances they had introduced, fixing most of them. The one thing they never fixed was a problem they never accepted as a problem. The random conefire. The introduction of random conefire was the most asinine thing they could possibly have done. They took one of the most effective and realistic recoil systems ever created and changed it to an expanding cone of fire because they thought it was "too hard for the average gamer to pick up and play" and they wanted to make it easier on them.

Well **** that. I'm sure everyone has heard the old addage "If it's not broke, don't fix it."
Wellthey were right. Don't fix something that works.



The release of DoD retail effectively gutted the competitive community, and with the release of Source the community is at an all-time low.

Melee isn't dying. The competitive community is dying and Brawl is killing it. It happened before and it will happen again.

But what you don't understand is the difference that makes it so the smash community can stay alive. That difference is support. When DoD retail came out, the support for 3.1b all but vanished. After all, the developers now worked for Valve.

But with smash it's different. We are the support. We don't have to quit playing Melee because Brawl came out. We can make the conscious decision to eschew the lackluster successor in favor of the outstanding predecessor.

To claim that Melee is dying simply because Brawl came out is ridiculous and you should be ashamed of yourself for selling yourself so short. We deserve better than Brawl and you should know it.




Edit: I would also like to thank anyone who actually took the time to read my whole post.

 

[only1Z]

Not only is it not dying, but you don't have the right to come in here and tell us to move on to the "Successor*"^check it. More flame war imo.

Are we even qq'ing at this point? We can show you why melee is the superior game.

*oh man, I was going to say "Wait for dyc's reply" And what do you know!

 

[Deleted member]

lol i knew when i typed my post i made a big mistake, i used the wrong word @_@

dyc you're right in pretty much every way, but competitive play follows the money. mlg probably wont continue to sponsor melee because melee's scene isnt growing anymore, brawl at least gives people a chance to join in the fray before everything is set in stone.

oh and you already won this agument (you pretty much wrecked my **** lol, i expect nothing less from some1 who played in cal)

that point up there was just my thoughts on brawl and melee's future lol.

 

[papermarkis]

At first I wasn't going to read the whole post and just post this pic http://i41.photobucket.com/albums/e268/papermarkis/colinpowelld9720zf7zf7.jpg

The I realized it's a post by DYC so it's likely to be made of pure win. But yes, as soon as I saw him say we need to accept Brawl as the successor I instantly thought to myself "Why?". We'll accept Brawl as the successor as soon as we see Brawl become as fun and advanced as Melee, but right now, Melee's the better game. Most of the people telling us to play Brawl have nothing to say other than "Play Brawl". They haven't given any reasons to as why we should. We all still have our Gamecubes, Melee discs, and memory cards, the game hasn't gone anywhere. Pretty much all of Melee's elite have denounced Brawl and gone back to hosting Melee tournaments. You may say this means the Melee community won't die down, but in actuality it will. Without a new interesting game to play, most of us Melee players will eventually get bored of it and stop playing. Our excitement of Brawl came from the concept of getting to play with new characters and stages. However, gameplay takes precedence over content, and Brawl's gameplay turned out not to be nearly as fun as Melee.

Now some people will say that people prefer Brawl because it gives them a chance to win, I honestly think that the Brawl crowd is still in the "OMGZ new game" the rest of us were in when the game came out. I pretty sure everyone thought the game would surpass Melee in nearly every aspect. I don't think anyone knew it would be a big nOOb game like it turned out to be before it's release.

There is a slight bit of hope though, since Nintendo has already said it would likely make another Smash Bros in a couple of years (likely before the end of the Wii's lifetime) if there was enough demand. Considering a large part of what goes into a Smash game is consumer requested, we could influence the next Smash game to be the game everyone likes. Though most things I usually hope for in life never come to fruition and I'm probably the world's biggest pessimist.

 

[DYC]

lol i knew when i typed my post i made a big mistake, i used the wrong word @_@

dyc you're right in pretty much every way, but competitive play follows the money. mlg probably wont continue to sponsor melee because melee's scene isnt growing anymore, brawl at least gives people a chance to join in the fray before everything is set in stone.

oh and you already won this agument (you pretty much wrecked my **** lol, i expect nothing less from some1 who played in cal)

that point up there was just my thoughts on brawl and melee's future lol.

That would be true if competitive smash depended solely on MLG's support. But like I said, it doesn't. It's an entity of its own. An entity composed of every tournament organizer and crew in the world. The melee tournament scene was completely self sufficient for years before MLG picked it up and got even larger after MLG basically dropped it for Vegas.

The point is, the real money for melee comes from us. The people who support tourneys local and national. That money doesn't have to go anywhere. We have that choice.

 

[adhdsoad]

Oh f***, DYC is on a killing spree again!

But **** I'm REALLY looking forward to all this melee talk. I don't think I've been to barrio since that night we tried getting the Japanese brawl working at 6 in the morning XD

I'm definitely going to try and support this melee revival. Looking forward to playing with you guys again!

 

[papermarkis]

Every crew needs it's PC Chris.

 

[Jesi]

And excuse me, but I was NOT even QQing one bit in my post. I just commented on the nature of each community so far. Smash is smash, and so far I've supported both communities pretty well even though I have lots of doubts about brawl and I'm terrible at melee.

I think Z and I ran the desk at the JCCC tournament well. We even participated in the tournament. And, I didn't say anything negative to those participating in the brawl tourney even when someone dissed on the small FRIENDLY Melee side tourney, calling it "a dead game" over the mic. I simply know that the melee community has been mature and strong over the last five+ years and will continue to stay alive. Period.

I would HOPE that the brawl community could at least live in harmony with the Melee comm. Honestly, neither community will be going away easily for the reasons already stated above (again, not a QQ, simply a subtle observation).

We all play smash, regardless of the version, so work together not against.

<3

On another note entirely: We wouldn't be doing our Melee thing, with an OOS in mind if there wasn't OOS interest in the scene. darkrain did some talking to other pros he knows and found that a big melee tourney is in demand, but (I sigh as I say this cause I hear it all day at work) gas prices make it really hard to travel, so the pot needs to be big. There are a lot of good players who would like to play melee that do not travel for melee anymore because SIMPLY the money is in brawl, more, sorry, N00BS to feed the pot.

You can even see this phenomenon in the recent melee tournament we held, there weren't any real "n00bs" that know nothing about competitive smash. Only people who have practiced melee and are active in the community showed. At the brawl tournament, yes there were more people, or the alternate term, "pot feeders", which is what is comprising a lot of big brawl smash tourneys IMO. Nothing wrong with that, tournament scenes thrive on that. Good for business, etc. (Although the nature of pot feeders kind of changes in brawl since the skill level is not as devastating as it is in melee-save that for another discussion).

This tournament is about connecting those who are still in love with melee, and not necessarily for those who reject brawl, but who understand both games and choose to keep the competitive spirit alive in melee. So I encourage brawl fans, who are equally Smash Bros. fans, to be a part of both communities, it can only help both brawl and melee tournament turn-out to have both communities wanting to come and be apart of something great and fun.

I also, encourage those of you new to brawl to try melee, if you don't like it, you should at least come away with a respect for how difficult it is to master, otherwise, well you're probably a sore loser (like me lol). And perhaps it will even make you realize how much you like brawl, but at least you will understand the difference and won't be posting about how "terrible and unbalanced" the game is without truly knowing what the game is about. I also seriously resent the idea that melee is "dying" it's not dying, it's changing, like all fighting games do. It's going from a very populated crowd of huuuge variety of skill levels, to a stronger more talented pool of players who compete at a high skill level. Essentially it kind of does weed out casual players, but thus, is the big change for the melee fighting scene.

But I digress, lots of melee kids gave brawl a chance, I don't see why it shouldn't go the other way around, but maybe I just live in a perfect balanced world in my own little head. lol

/rant

 

[adhdsoad]

But I digress, lots of melee kids gave brawl a chance, I don't see why it shouldn't go the other way around, but maybe I just live in a perfect balanced world in my own little head. lol

Haha this is sooo true

 

[CFMV]

There is a slight bit of hope though, since Nintendo has already said it would likely make another Smash Bros in a couple of years (likely before the end of the Wii's lifetime) if there was enough demand. Considering a large part of what goes into a Smash game is consumer requested, we could influence the next Smash game to be the game everyone likes. Though most things I usually hope for in life never come to fruition and I'm probably the world's biggest pessimist.

If there is a new smash game, it will just be slower, gayer, and more "user friendly" than Brawl. The Sakurai that created Melee has been dead for some time now.

 

[Stealth Raptor]

Thankfully Sakurai is no longer involved in smash (or so i have hears) so hopefully the next one will be as good.

And melee will NEVER die. Ever. Not only is it the superior game, but the sheer fact that smash 64 is still alive and well, means that melee will stay alive. of course, as mentioned, will there be enough players to support big tournies? so far it looks like it.

To be quite honest the only reason i like brawl as much as i do is because it is fun and it has.......a pikachu whos game i can use.

 

[thedobaga]

I'm in Lenexa (Very close to Kansas City.. like a 5 minute drive..).

I may suck, but the only way to get better is to get out there and play, right?

(Don't know if this is the right place to post this, but, eh, I don't see any other Kansas City topic..)

 

[DYC]

This is the right place to post that. =P

 

[N64]

attn new people: be at this weekend's barrio soz I can meet you and say hi and maybe play some super smash bros.
attn old people: be at this weekend's barrio so we can have super fun times.
attn everyone: you are awesome.

 

[DYC]

Who the **** are you?

 

[Cups]

Brawl is ruining the Watchmen trailer for me.

The main reason why I believe Melee won't die is because it is made up of people with unwaivering dedication to make a video game succeed. Smash has never been an online game (and still isn't IMO), it relied steadily on people coming together with like-minded individuals to play, practice, and compete. If you are ever to get good at a Smash game, you cannot just sit at home and practice technical skill or utilize online capabilities to improve your skill; it was rather dependant on attendance from numerous individuals in a COMPETITIVE ENVIRONMENT. That said, I believe Melee will survive for some time simply because of this conversation that we have now. Since there are people hoping that it will survive, and those said individuals have ran and attended tourneys for years, then it will survive as such.

It is all about supply and demand, and for right now there is a high demand for Melee to survive, so it probably will.

 

[Jturley46]

Oh yeah I forgot that the 9th is Jesi's partay, **** SCSYN II, jesi is too good =D

 

[papermarkis]

Oh yeah, about the potential new Smash game in a couple of years, Sakurai already said he would develop it if he was asked. I wouldn't worry about that though. We seem to be forgetting that he's still the man that made Melee and Smash 64. The series would not have even started if it wasn't for him. However, the last thing this thread needs is yet another Brawl discussion. We all know who is on what side and for what reason.

To be quite honest the only reason i like brawl as much as i do is because it is fun and it has.......a pikachu whos game i can use.

I'm pretty sure we're all attracted to at least one character in Brawl. I mean, poor Z missed Ike so much he started playing Roy for like a week. And I love the fact that Meta-Knight, pretty much my favorite Nintendo character ever is in.

 

[only1Z]

I still play roy jerk!

 

[CFMV]

I'm in Lenexa (Very close to Kansas City.. like a 5 minute drive..).

I live in Lenexa too. 25 miles in 5 minutes? What kind of car do you do that with?

 

[Jesi]

mmm yes parties, it will be a grand ol time.. i'll put up a facebook event today and I am strongly considering having catering..SOOOOO... there will be lots of yummy foods and drinks.

<3

 

[Stealth Raptor]

So what is the date of the big party again?

 

[Jace08]

If melee never came out, Brawl would probably be the best game ever. But it did, so relatively Brawl sucks; it's still important to play both games imo as long as you realize Melee is the superior of the two . This vid sums it up pretty well: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQz6vBv3JIM

Oh and out of curiosity where does the OOS bonus money go if no OOS smasher happens to get 1st, 2nd, or 3rd place? Everyone knows JCCC is free to reserve, of course, so luckily there's nothing to pay for the Regnier Center...

 

[darkrain]

If no one from another state takes 1st , which probably won't happen, then the money will be added to the entire pot...and JCCC isn't free, the game interest group always takes a cut of the pot in exchange for use of the room.

 

[Jturley46]

I live in Lenexa too. 25 miles in 5 minutes? What kind of car do you do that with?

lol, I was thinking the exact same thing.

 

[Stealth Raptor]

I live in Lenexa too. 25 miles in 5 minutes? What kind of car do you do that with?

Obviousy a car that can go 300 mph. duh, cant you do math?

 

[Cake.]

If melee never came out, Brawl would probably be the best game ever.

That is a fallacy.

hehe, I said "fallacy"

 

[papermarkis]

The thing is even without Melee, I can't see Brawl becoming much of a competitive game. Sure we would all be playing it, but probably not going to tournaments with it.