Melee =/= Brawl (Not a hate topic on either game)

[|RK|]

I don't mean to inspire any hatred between Melee and Brawl, rather to balance respects for either community. So if you are looking for a Melee vs Brawl topic, this isn't it. After reading this topic:

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=225831

I realized that the poster had somethings right (and I do not see why the topic was locked. It was well written, concise, and was actually the definition of a blog. Just because his opinions won't be praised doesn't mean it was in the wrong place. Whether it stirs up hate or not, it's still a blog) and I realize that Brawl isn't getting further is because of a Melee mentality. We are still, even despite current knowledge, treating Brawl in the same mindset as Melee. We are looking for AT's in the same way as Melee, and bringing Melee practices over. What we really should do is erase everything up until the first time we played Melee, then replace it with Brawl. What we have effectively done now is advanced our minds. Brawl is obviously a different game. We think of items the same way as we did in Melee. I realize that the people working on ISP has tested items, but that was far after Brawl was released. We banned Smash Balls because they were unfair, yet the lower tiers, the ones that need them, get the better ones, and the higher ups get the worse ones. Have you noticed that? That is the epitome of balance. But as soon as we played Brawl, we turned off the items (most of you anyway) why? Because they were unfair in Melee. We tried everything that we could do in Melee, noticed half of it didn't work, and wrote Brawl off as the worse game.

My friends, such is the definition of a close minded community. Why can't we think outside the box? I recently read in a topic "What is a noob?" one of the posts that said "Anyone who thinks Final Smashes should be incorporated into the tier list." First, I think that we should compare the characters position on the tier list to the amount that they have to gain on the tier list. Then compare how hard that character must work to break the Smash Ball open. While we think that Smash Balls are broken, they are the only saving grace for most characters. We now have Brawl+ to balance the game. Apparently, Melee was too perfect to need balancing. Yet Brawl has made an attempt to fix that. Smash Balls. We must remember that Brawl is not Melee. Why do we keep comparing them? Melee is a crazy awesome game, yes, but Brawl is also a crazy awesome game. Most of the players who dislike Brawl are people with brilliant reflexes who found their skills eschewed in the slower pace of Brawl. M2K is one of the exceptions because he has both quick fingers and a quick mind for trickery/mindgames. We should not expect Melee to be Brawl, or vice versa. I mean, how many of you were disappointed when Melee wasn't 64? Like Melee to Brawl, 64 to Melee got a plethora of new tactics, but did still lose some. Characters were made less broken, etc. Melee to Brawl also lost things. But then again, there is a lot of 64 left undiscovered. Remember, Melee came out a meager 2 years after 64. After 7 years of Melee, many don;t give much thought to Brawl.

Brawl is another game. We can't let nostalgia cloud our minds. Melee was and still is awesome. But after 7 years, many aren't ready to make the jump. There is plenty of skill needed for Brawl. There are plenty of options available from Brawl. If we are truly ready to establish ourselves as a fighting game community, we must rise to the occasion, with new minds ready to be filled, and new tactics to learn. We must accept new things. After but a month or two, we banned all items. Actually, we have banned the Smash Balls, because the other items? We thought the same as we did in Melee. But once again, like 64 to Melee, there are some things kept. Thinking in the same Melee mindset will therefore discover a few things, but not much more than that. When will we stop treating Brawl as what we wanted it to be like, instead of what it truly is? Like Melee, and possibly 64 (we wouldn't know, would we), Brawl is a deep game, with much is waiting to be found within it. But the question is, when will we be ready to find it.

This reminds me of lyrics from one of my favorite Linkin Park songs:

When I pretend that everything is what I want it to be
I look exactly like what you always wanted to see

We must go forward and treat Brawl as a separate game and explore ALL of it's options, even normal stock matches, and maybe even coin matches. Let's explore and expand the metagame in Brawl. This time from scratch.



I once posted this in the General Brawl Discussion, but I'm bringing it back here because there was confusion in the original one, and this is in light of the Meta-Knight ban. And the most recent posts.

 

[stabbedbyanipple]

You have fun with that.

I'll go play Melee.

 

[Pr0phetic]

Even though this isn't a SSBM vs SSBB topic, it will most likely branch into one. careful with this topic...

But yes, they are all different games with a common tie and slightly similar feel.

 

[Supermodel From Paris]

You have fun with that.

I'll go play Melee.

Then stop posting about it on the Brawl boards.

 

[Kamikaze*]

This may be brawl, but a bob-omb can still spawn in front of your Fsmash and kill you.

No.

 

[Kinzer]

Can't that happen in Melee too?

...If somebody posts before me, I'm asking about the Bob-Ombs, spawning in the worst of times.

CURSE YOU ENDLESS MELEE, I was going for the WR!

 

[Beren Zaiga]

Believe it or not, I read the entire post.

Here is the catch, I have not played Melee avidly enough to give a good opinion. So all that I will say is this.

Discuss.​

 

[|RK|]

Do note that this is rather old, and the items are only there for comparison. That point led to confusion in the old topic so I'll clear that up now.

EDIT: Oh, and food isn't broken, especially since you can turn off crates and barrels.

 

[Col. Stauffenberg]

I fail to see the point of this thread.

 

[Cold Fusion]

EDIT: Oh, and food isn't broken, especially since you can turn off crates and barrels.

Heart containers are broken though. They restore too much damage.

 

[Falconv1.0]

Heart containers are broken though. They restore too much damage.

^Not stating the obvious at allllllll.

 

[GHNeko]

Which is why they're banned.

I'd just like to point out, that the transition of 64 to Melee is way less severe with the transition of Melee to Brawl.

Net wise, 64> Melee, more was gained than lost. Melee > Brawl, more was lost than gained.

 

[EvolveOrDie]

Your saying that less was lost going from 64 to melee than melee to brawl, I disagree not because many things were not lost but because you mention net gain. I can't see in any real way that Melee has more unique content over 64 than Brawl has unique content over Melee. I still want one good explanation why items with no explosive properties and/or overwhelming risk/reward ratio are deemed unfair by the community but that's not here or there, I think...

Anyway why can't we be a little more open minded when it comes to Brawl. I don't support Brawl+ because something feels off to me when you change around the games code and it isn't inherently present. I don't approve but I let it try and be what ever it wants to be. I suggest we as a whole allow the Brawl community to decide what it wants to do; many made the switch to Brawl but still felt like Melee was the better game. If you feel that way then you may not be in the best position to make an unbiased decision on what is good for the growth of the community.

 

[teekay]

There is no argument in this post. You've got absolutely no logical transition from "Melee and Brawl are different games" to "items are totally different in Brawl than in Melee."

They're different games, but items behave in exactly the same fashion. Most of the items from Melee are in Brawl and vice versa. If they're fine in one they're fine in the other. Unless you can give some kind of explanation of what exact differences in Brawl cause items to work differently, or be more/less fair than they were in Melee.

 

[GHNeko]

Well what I meant was net gain percentage-wise. Sorry about that.

Generally, a majority of the things that were in 64 where brought to Melee, and then Melee added more content. When going from Melee to Brawl, more things were lost than gained.

Thats how I see it.

 

[HyperEnergy]

There is no argument in this post. You've got absolutely no logical transition from "Melee and Brawl are different games" to "items are totally different in Brawl than in Melee."

They're different games, but items behave in exactly the same fashion. Most of the items from Melee are in Brawl and vice versa. If they're fine in one they're fine in the other. Unless you can give some kind of explanation of what exact differences in Brawl cause items to work differently, or be more/less fair than they were in Melee.

Actually, there is a huge difference between items in melee and items in brawl. Capsules and crates. In melee they spawned randomly whenever items were turned on. Add to that the fact that they exploded about 10-20% of the time and yeah...it's like a pseudo bob-omb.

Same feature is not in brawl, however. Whether that makes items viable in brawl or not is up to discussion.

 

[SpongeBathBill]

Indeed. "Melee=/=Brawl."

I started to appreciate Brawl one hell of a lot more once I came to terms with this, even if I personally prefer Melee.

Can't speak for the items discussion because I didn't read the whole post.

 

[Dark 3nergy]

Love each game for what they all have to offer. Your asking for a massive headache if you try to compare any one of the three.

 

[Dxt XXII]

Love each game for what they all have to offer. Your asking for a massive headache if you try to compare any one of the three.

Amen

I am still waiting for the day people stop comparing Brawl to Melee so much. Yes, brawl is a different game and is less competetive, but still is a great game. Compared to Melee, it's not very competetive. Now, compare it to any other game out there; no game is harder.

 

[Zankoku]

You seem to be advocating looking for things in a new light in Brawl, but I'd suggest using a less provocative thread title, in context of past threads regarding comparisons between the two games.

 

[Falconv1.0]

I should note this thread is not the first of it's kind, and the most recent one I can remember got pretty much ***** by me and some other fun people.

We are not trying anything extremely new, we just aren't.

 

[MajinSweet]

Amen

I am still waiting for the day people stop comparing Brawl to Melee so much. Yes, brawl is a different game and is less competetive, but still is a great game. Compared to Melee, it's not very competetive. Now, compare it to any other game out there; no game is harder.

I highly disagree. I don't like Brawl because I think practically any other competitive game is superior. This isn't just a case of people not liking it alongside Melee. Brawl has some very strange design choices.

 

[Paingel]

This may be brawl, but a bob-omb can still spawn in front of your Fsmash and kill you.

No.

Just for the sake of argument... I mean, I don't really care either way or anything, but just saying.

Beam Swords don't explode when they spawn in front of your Fsmash. So why not turn Bob-ombs off and leave Beam Swords on?

Also, to address the randomness of items argument: you can't completely eliminate that, but you can come close. Here's how.

First off: You make it so there's only one type of item per match. That is, you pick items like you would a stage. If your character is strong with Star Rods, and it's your turn to CP, you can pick Star Rods... for example. In this way, when you camp a spawn point, you know EXACTLY what item is going to spawn there. There's nothing random about it.

Second: You turn the items on to Very High. In this way, there's always at least one copy of this item SOMEWHERE on the map, so you can always just run up and grab it, and there's enough of this item for two players. In this way, there's nothing random about the item's placement either.

This might be an interesting way to put items in. And if you do it this way you can no longer complain about the randomness of getting items.

 

[Shaya]

Bludgeon weapons are throwable...

When it's random where if something is spawned, and every character gets an awesomely spammable projectile when there's multiple of one item spawning near them.... well... yeah.

Imagine a brawl with competitive items... Diddy Kong would be close to obsolete.

 

[Paingel]

Well having throwable items is basically going to give every single charater a respectable projectile game, provided that they stay on certain parts of the map. Granted you could try to keep your opponent off of those spaces, but not every character has ways of doing that and some characters have good camping games.

Perhaps Diddy Kong can use his bananas to control most of the spawn points on smaller maps? It might actually make him OP if used this way. I'm not 100% certain but I think maps like Lylat Cruise only have about 3 spawn points, so Diddy can banana 2 and then camp 1 and have the whole map controlled. But then having him as God Tier would be just as bad as having him obsolete, so...

Now, on a big map like Temple, Diddy might have a problem controlling the spawn points in this manner, but big maps like Temple are banned so it's not an issue. Also: Doing it this way would make it so that any moving stage would be a good CP to Diddy, but in a moving stage it would be more difficult to camp a spawn point in the first place because you can't simply just stand in one place the whole time.

On that note, it would give Snake more options too, allowing him the option to land mine the spawn points in order to create a trap for his opponent.

Thats how I imagine brawl with competitive items anyways, though I'll admit it's not a complete picture.

 

[~ Gheb ~]

I argued a while ago that there should be alternative rulesets for Brawl, which consider the use of certain items as well as custom stages:
http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=221700

Needless to say, I agree with the basic idea of the OP and the thread linked in it. Even though I'm not dissatisfied with the way Brawl is played right now I'm still convinced that the game started out wrong. I heard from many people that competitive Melee started out with all items and stages on and then the rules slowly got modified into the way they are now over the years. This essential process was completely skipped in Brawl and the rules were basically taken over the way they were in Melee. As a result a lot of mechanics that were flawed in Melee were never taken into considration in Brawl despite being fixed. In Melee you couldn't use items without having containers on as well (which indeed were broken). This isn't the case for Brawl though which means that you can turn off all truly broken items. And a lot of these items are potentially completely acceptable for competitive play...

The argument you hear most often against items is "that it supports randomness, which is uncompetitive". The truth is that the spawning of items is never 100% random, because you know that they'll always land on the stage. If somebody is able to control a stage better than his opponent, why shouldn't he be rewarded when he is obviously more skilled? What's wrong with being able to use a franklin badge when you manage to keep your opponent pressured at the edge or in the air? If you were able to outsmart your opponent in Melee you had the possibility to deal massive damage with a combo. I don't see anything wrong with ppl being able to get an item for outsmarting his opponent either. It's the risk/reward principle that is the basis of all fighting games.

Some items are not broken:

- Warp star: Easy to avoid, risky to use
- Food: Doesn't heal much
- Franklin Badge: Can be knocked off
- Sandbag: Doesn't hurt you
- Smart Bomb: Can be easily SDIed out of
- Smoke Bomb: Has only little effect overall
- Banana Peel: Don't affect anything before they're picked up

These are just the items that come to mind right away I'm sure that most items are pretty acceptable once you know how to deal with them...as long as a reasonable amount of risk/skill is included it shouldn't be banned. Some items are obviously too good and reward the user too much with no risk but rewarding the player who controls the stage with a Banana, some food or a Sandbag is neither broken nor truly random.

Banning all items right away also made many stages unviable without being tested enough. The main argument against Hyrule Temple is "infinite circle camping" or something among those lines. Throw in some food and there's no point in running away anymore. If you run away all the time you allow your opponent to obtain an item that restores his health and makes hit and run tactics obsolete.
I am conviced if people would take deeper looks at items and how they interact with stages many things would not need to be banned. In fact I'd say that most of the things in the game could be reasonably used in competitive play withou warranting a ban. If people would take their time to practise these things there'd be probably more agreement on this idea as well.
Something I find interesting is that the addition of stages an items might work well against questionable tactics such as planking. If food is allowed there's no point is planking. It's simply impossible to plank on certain stages due to the layout.
Things like MK, planking or infinites become problems because we skipped many thing we shouldn't have without testings...but of course: Use the word "item" and you're a scrub...

Many complaints about Brawl aren't actually about the game itself but about the way it is played. Brawl has many options that are not used: change damage ratio to potentially change the effects of CGs. Use heavy Brawl for a faster gameplay with more gimping possibilities. Custom stages to add variety etc etc. These things all are part of the game but aren't used. Instead people complain about something that's actually easy to change.

 

[Luigi player]

Items are the most boring thing ever.

 

[mostwins]

For me turning items off was never about randomness. Items just centralize the game on only items, why would you ever bother using your character to its potential when items are there to be abused.

 

[da K.I.D.]

isnt there like 13 different spawn points on final D alone?

also, I really dont like being able to kill with a capsule at like 70

 

[GHNeko]

LOL @ What the Topic has ALREADY drifted into. xD

 

[bobson]

also, I really dont like being able to kill with a capsule at like 70

I really don't like Metaknight gimping me at 30 with a dair.

 

[The MC Clusky]

Brawl is a deep game, with much is waiting to be found within it. But the question is, when will we be ready to find it.

I lol'd.

Not only was this a clever attempt to disguise the bring items back argument, but no one wants to realize that Brawl was designed to curb competitive play.

That's why there are

-dozens of obvious inbalance issues in the game (DDD cg infinite, wall infinites all over the place, jab locks, just Metaknight himself)

-and then there is all the simplification (auto sweet spot, no l canceling, which has been in there since Smash 1, and power shielding so easy beginners can do it)

-tripping. A random aspect that cannot be removed without hacking the game.

The problem people are looking for something because Brawl as it is, just isn't very deep. It was designed to not be. The only thing people are going to find anymore are things that make Brawl even more unbalanced.

People have been trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill for over a year now and it's tiring.

 

[EvolveOrDie]

No offense but do you realize how imbalanced a lot of other games usually are, I'm not saying you aren't right but that despite these imbalances the game can still be played competitively where skill makes the difference. Your argument amounted to; other stuff is better, simplification is for scrubs, and tripping is the devil. Congratulations, you've compared some parts of a unique game that has its issues that many parts of the community insist can already be addressed by changing some of the settings already availabe in the game. Oh no not the almighty l-cancel that god that descended from the sky and gave melee competitive play. Oh wait, that isn't how it happened is it, well shucks. Too long I have heard comments like this and they really just make me sad, so caught up in not having the exact game you wanted just makes you seem selfish. Also how do you know how deep this game was designed to be, so many people are convinced sakurai is like hell-bent on destroying everything in this world that is competitive. Lastly, really if you feel that way about brawl don't ever speak about it again then because you have now informed us of your stance on the game so don't ever mention it again and this isn't a hey lets bring items back, it is a hey remember the rest of the game that we could be playing let's give it a try. Sort of like how when you first played a game in the smash series and gave it a chance which could try to be civil for once, pull our heads out our ***** and I don't know stop trying to implode the brawl community.

 

[Melomaniacal]

Says the man who has never been to a competitive tournament.

Please, you are not the first person to try to argue this. It has been done more times than I can count. The item argument is just plain stupid. Randomness is ANTI-COMPETITIVE. We remove items because they are RANDOM. Final Smashes are completely stupid. You want them on? Fox, Falco, and Wolf are now OP. Despite what you think, FS's are NOT balances AT ALL.
We transfer practices from Melee to Brawl? I don't remember planking being an problem in Melee. I don't remember Melee having excessive camping and defensive game play. No, it's pretty **** obvious that our mindset for Brawl is completely different.

 

[The MC Clusky]

No offense but do you realize how imbalanced a lot of other games usually are, I'm not saying you aren't right but that despite these imbalances the game can still be played competitively where skill makes the difference. Your argument amounted to; other stuff is better, simplification is for scrubs, and tripping is the devil. Congratulations, you've compared some parts of a unique game that has its issues that many parts of the community insist can already be addressed by changing some of the settings already availabe in the game. Oh no not the almighty l-cancel that god that descended from the sky and gave melee competitive play. Oh wait, that isn't how it happened is it, well shucks. Too long I have heard comments like this and they really just make me sad, so caught up in not having the exact game you wanted just makes you seem selfish. Also how do you know how deep this game was designed to be, so many people are convinced sakurai is like hell-bent on destroying everything in this world that is competitive. Lastly, really if you feel that way about brawl don't ever speak about it again then because you have now informed us of your stance on the game so don't ever mention it again and this isn't a hey lets bring items back, it is a hey remember the rest of the game that we could be playing let's give it a try. Sort of like how when you first played a game in the smash series and gave it a chance which could try to be civil for once, pull our heads out our ***** and I don't know stop trying to implode the brawl community.

Umm Sakurai himself has stated numerous times the reasons behind his design choices. He wants people that lose at the game to still be able to enjoy it. He specifically stated he doesn't like it when one person wins every game. He wanted to make sure that even if that happens people can still enjoy it. He put in Final Smashes (and the pity Final Smash you get when you are down several stock) for people that suck to stand a chance. HOW CAN YOU IGNORE THIS?

Its all been researched, played out numerous times, etc, and items are just not popular no matter how strong of an argument you try to make for them. There is ISP and that's as close as you are going to get. Its there, not the standard, so YOU need to stop crying because people don't care much about it.

 

[|RK|]

LISTEN UP EVERYONE. I TRIED TO MAKE SURE THAT THIS WOULDN'T HAPPEN ON THE VERY FIRST PAGE. THIS IS WHAT IT ERUPTED INTO THE LAST TIME, AND IT'S STARTING AGAIN. THIS. IS. NOT. AN. ITEMS. DEBATE. ITEMS ARE MERELY THERE FOR A COMPARISON. SO PLEASE SHUT UP ABOUT ITEMS. WHAT WE SHOULD BE FOCUSING ON MORE IS THINGS LIKE DAMAGE RATIOS AND HOW THEY WORK etc. Because Melee isn't Brawl. This isn't about items. STOP. IT. NOW.

 

[mventre]

The thing that I don't understand is when people say that development took out things such as wavedashing and L-cancelling to make the game less competitive. Although this does make the game less competitive, I feel that development took these "moves" out of the game because they are code defects that were not known to be executed by the game's code at the time of production. Being a developer, I wouldn't want a certain move to be in a video game if I did not intentionally put it there. Brawl's developers probably took out wavedashing, L-canceling, etc ... because it was not intentional and they wanted the code to be more robust ...i dunno, go figure

 

[bobson]

We should enable items competitively.

 

[GHNeko]

The thing that I don't understand is when people say that development took out things such as wavedashing and L-cancelling to make the game less competitive. Although this does make the game less competitive, I feel that development took these "moves" out of the game because they are code defects that were not known to be executed by the game's code at the time of production. Being a developer, I wouldn't want a certain move to be in a video game if I did not intentionally put it there. Brawl's developers probably took out wavedashing, L-canceling, etc ... because it was not intentional and they wanted the code to be more robust ...i dunno, go figure

Seriously shows what you know. Wavedashing was an exploit of a physics feature they intentionally developed. They WANTED you to slide when you air dodged into the ground. That's why the feature was PUT THERE. That's why when you AD into the ground, you recieve a few frames of lag. What they didnt want (nor expect) was for people to use it to generally homogenize the ground game and exploit it to the degree that it was and currenty is at. L-Canceling is 110% intentional because Z-Canceling was in 64. If anything, L-Canceling is a nerfed version of Z-Canceling. That was 100% intentional and you cannot disprove that because the premises of pressing a button to cancel lag spawned over 2 games, and the concept (all though homogenized) exists in Brawl. If you land during a certain window of a move, the lag of said move is reduced, hence autocanceling.

 

[Paingel]

And here I thought we might be able to have some thought-provoking intellectual discussion.

*sigh*

Oh well. Time to watch this flame war light up like a holocaust.

*impales Kirby on a stick* Roasted marshmallows anyone?