New Jersey killed Brawl. They alone, and no one else.

[Eternal Yoshi]

To quote Jorgen Von Strangle, Not exactly,

1 - Can't comment on that.

2a - Most of the articles don't intentionally bash brawl. Almost all of the bashing comes from the COMMENTS section of the articles by random people. The only article I've seen directly bash the game was the result of the reporter's spin on the interview and not that of the Melee/PM enthusiasts directly. There are more than a few occasions where a writer would spin or twist someone's words around to create controversy.

2b - Stop blaming the Melee players for this -_- Apex in general has had a history of sketchy organization that affected everyone and this year was no different. That's still no excuse for the Brawl TOs putting Jaxel what he went through.

3 - Not saying it wasn't possible to make Brawl competitive. I'm saying that the game isn't as good as it should be competitively and it's the root of this whole problem. So many things balance and mechanics wise could've been handled so much better, and time is accentuating those flaws as more people become aware of them regardless of what the media says. It's becoming clear that Brawl is not a game that can survive the test of time.

So yeah like I said before, please stop pointing fingers at other communities/players.

 

[Cassio]

If I spent 30 seconds reading that article, which most people browsing the site would, I would see "PM makes Brawl playable" and "Nintendo screwed the pooch on Brawl development" "geeks who can develop games better than professionals". Now I've just advertised a game at the expense of another for literally no reason. This is a familiar tone for PM and melee articles with Brawl. And this is harmful and Im suprised I have to overtly state this. Also RJ wrote an essay on how he kept getting screwed by the lack of set ups either from not being prepared or from being taken or moved without being told from the Apex staff/melee's TOs, which directly affected what happened with jaxel. If you dont know then please dont assume.

And no, Brawl's issue is not its competitive value. Balance and mechanics dont even affect that, those are things novices complain about. Competitively PM is simple compared to other smash games and it succeeds in spite of this. If there's something to complain about in terms of balance and mechanics its it can become difficult to watch especially without decent knowledge of the game. e.g. competitively theres nothing wrong with MK or top tiers winning frequently, slow paced games, cgs, etc., but to a viewer or someone invested in the game it becomes difficult especially when they become invested in 'fairness', a trait that itself isnt really competitive. In that sense, being easier to play and watch can affect a games success, and this isn't to say we shouldnt strive for some degree of fairness, but this has nothing to do with its competitiveness.

The doom and gloom of Brawl is overblown and perhaps self-fulfulling, but the start of its recent issues only started 6-12 months ago after 5 years of doing fine. Not too hard to connect the dots here.

 

[Eternal Yoshi]

If I spent 30 seconds reading that article, which most people browsing the site would, I would see "PM makes Brawl playable" and "Nintendo screwed the pooch on Brawl development" "geeks who can develop games better than professionals". Now I've just advertised a game at the expense of another community for literally no reason. This is a familiar tone for PM articles. And this is harmful and Im suprised I have to overtly state this. Also RJ wrote an essay on how he kept getting screwed by the lack of set ups either from not being prepared or from being taken or moved without being told from the Apex staff/melee's TOs, which directly affected what happened with jaxel. If you dont know then please dont assume.

This is more the fault of the reporter/writer/editor of the article rather than the PM/Melee rep himself. Like I said, the media loves to twist their words around for the sake of pizazz and controversy even if it distorts the meaning and intention of them.
Case in point: http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2013/12/project-m-super-smash-bros-mod/

Like Djent said, the hate a game gets doesn't discourage competitors by itself, and that the passionate players and enthusiasts play a much bigger role in how a game goes. It's only getting more attention because there's no one that's passionate for Brawl at the same level there are passionate players of other fighters or even other smash games at this time.

You cannot blame the PM/Melee players and enthusiasts for what's happening to Brawl. It would be more constructive to try and find a way to keep Brawl alive after smash 4's release rather than pointing fingers, however challenging it may be.

And no, Brawl's issue is not its competitive value. Balance and mechanics dont even affect that, those are things novices complain about. Competitively PM is simple compared to other smash games and it succeeds in spite of this. If there's something to complain about in terms of balance and mechanics its it can become difficult to watch especially without decent knowledge of the game. e.g. competitively theres nothing wrong with MK or top tiers winning frequently, slow paced games, cgs, etc., but to a viewer or someone invested in the game it becomes difficult especially when they become invested in 'fairness', a trait that itself isnt really competitive. In that sense, being easier to play and watch can affect a games success, and this isn't to say we shouldnt strive for some degree of fairness, but this has nothing to do with its competitiveness.

The doom and gloom of Brawl is overblown and perhaps self-fulfulling, but the start of its recent issues only started 6-12 months ago after 5 years of doing fine. Not too hard to connect the dots here.

I would say that Brawl's key issue IS the competitive value it has, and what the director has done to it before release.
Also balance and mechanics do play a part in that.
You don't have to be a novice to have a problem with a game's balance and mechanics. That seems to imply that every player that has rallied for Meta Knight's ban in the past and those that don't like Brawl even after trying the game for a little while is a novice, which I know isn't correct.

Also competitive PM is only seemingly simple because it's still in development; once time goes by, you'll see that there will be a lot of factors and more new matchups that will matter in it's Metagame due to the characters being closer to being balanced, which means there will be a lot more to think about in the long run.

I wouldn't say Brawl was doing fine all this time. As stated before, the decisions the Brawl community made down the line to try to resolve certain problems probably weren't the best way to handle it. The roots of said problems start within the design choices the devs made to dumb down the game to make it more accessible while unnecessarily sacrificing depth.

 

[Cassio]

From the article you yourself linked:

a group of enterprising Nintendo fans launched Project M, a mod for the 2008 Wii game Super Smash Bros. Brawl. The group’s mission statement: Brawl was a terribly flawed game that needed fixing, and through mods they could mend it.

“Super Smash Brothers Brawl was made to appeal to newcomers somewhat at the expense of some of the series’ most dedicated fans,” says Project M senior developer Corey Archer.

Hate doesnt discourage competitors by itself? Well now, if you pay close attention, you'll notice that I actually spent half my argument on Brawl's organizational issues. Its almost as if there can be more than one reason, lol . In fact I made a good comparison to melee's and the fgc's status roughly a decade ago compared to where brawl is now (PM/melee communities are old and Brawl is young), except the FGC wasnt creating advertisement for how 'flawed' brawl was. If the people who play brawl wanted to be constructive, they could cause turmoil with PM's perception as a game to negate the active negative perceptions it causes for Brawl. Fortunately the Brawl players are more level headed then that, and preventing further negative perceptions of Brawl from being disseminated by PM/melee/others in other ways is constructive (in addition to other steps).

People rallied for MK's ban for different reasons, the most common one being that he wasnt necessarily bannable but that itd be good for the community. I have no issue with regions or pocket regions banning MK, my only issue was a blanket ban. Maybe the biggest mistake was demonizing people from doing one or the other. In any case, this really doesn't have to do with competitive value, in spite of how many times you'd like to repeat the point, youve made absolutely no argument to support the claim. I will gladly put my knowledge of this subject against anyone elses. Brawl has no issues here, as mentioned problems mainly lie with difficulties in following the game.

Prior to Evo, Brawl had the largest grassroots success of all smash games. It mightve done better had the smash community treated Brawl better, but to say it wasnt doing fine is pretty crazy. Brawl being developed as it was, like every other smash game, did not limit its depth. But by your statements on the quality of its depth you don't seem to have an understanding of smash depth it seems and Id be very willing to discuss this (that being Brawl's strong depth as a smash game) as well. PM is comparatively simpler because it requires you to think less compared to Brawl and 'tech' less compared to melee. However its for these reasons the game is the easiest to get into and definitely fun, so I wouldnt necessarily say those are bad qualities for PM to have and theres still a good amount of thinking and tech skill involved.

 

[Dantarion]

http://projectmgame.com/en/about

This is exactly what EY meant.
That "mission statement" was made up by the person writing the article.

 

[Dekillsage]

Maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaannnnnnn TL;DR

 

[Cassio]

http://projectmgame.com/en/about

This is exactly what EY meant.
That "mission statement" was made up by the person writing the article.

Buddy, these people arent just pulling BS out of thin air. Read your about section and the quotes from your developers, you dont need to take a leap of faith to see why theyre filling in the gaps the way they are on top of overt attacks. Many PM developers and leaders ooze criticisms of Brawl in spite of their ignorance of how the game functions at high-top level (look no further than SB's sig), and you expect anyone to believe the writers just randomly decided to collectively get together and write multiple individual articles with antagonism included? Does not follow. If you're actually serious about this, then start controlling the language and message used with media, asking for corrections, and take better care on the wording used in interviews and making sure a message you arent sending isnt.

 

[Strong Badam]

Is there a problem with my signature?

Anyway playing the victim is just pathetic. I don't have anything against Brawl players (some of my closest friends and favorite players actually were primarily Brawl players) but even the Brawl community isn't very passionate about your game and haven't been for years. Anytime the Melee community does something that took a lot of effort someone in the Brawl community is there asking why we didn't include them; the reason is that time and time again the Brawl community has shown that it does not have the work ethic to put in the effort to accomplish things. We're having trouble finding community leaders to lead the Brawl section of the Smashboards rankings because Brawlers just don't care enough. Riding off the fact that Brawl is the most recent Smash game for so many years to populate your events has made your community lazy and shaky; in contrast, the Melee (and now PM) communities had to fight and claw their way through stigmas of age and illegitimacy to get to where they are today. Yeah, Brawl probably would have had an easier time if people didn't bash it often, but that just comes with the territory of competing games in a limited niche. If the Brawl community cared enough about their game they would have succeeded in spite of this, and we didn't see that. Sorry dudes. 5 years ago you were on the other side of the barricade. We didn't play the victim, we just fought and won. Hope Smash 4 works out for ya.

 

[Cassio]

I don't really care that its here, I just think it proves my point. That is it says something about the PMBR and don't think its a stretch to assume that translates to how conversations on the subject are handled and why we end up with articles like the one above.

Also way to read the thread bro. I covered everything you said in my first post and certainly wasnt playing victim. The recent discussion was just to stuff the notion that PM leaders were acting appropriately. Assuming other parts of the smash community can behave themselves, I expect it to start doing well again once the people who grew up on it get older.

I also hope youre not implying the games can't succeed with each other, because PM's success is still built on melee, not the young players from Brawl.

 

[Strong Badam]

You're really just trying to extract something that isn't even there. His statement is absolutely hilarious and makes for a great signature and nail in the coffin on his debate in that thread, but that's about it. Overswarm is a terrible representative of the Brawl community and I wouldn't judge your community based on his horrendous and sensational debating strategy, and I sincerely hope others wouldn't either.

Believe me, we in the PMBR were very annoyed with that Wired article and even e-mailed the author to re-word it. We were declined. You're trying to place blame on the wrong people here. The media likes to bring light to the fact that Brawl isn't great, but that's not what we're after. Saying that Brawl sucks or whatever doesn't help us out in spreading PM, so we're really the last people that want to see it bashed especially in the context of PM.

 

[Cassio]

My mistake, though interesting as that explanation is, reading the quote initially I dont think its a stretch to assume its a criticism. I just thought of the quickest example I could.

There was a direct quote in there from a developer...I mean, I acknowledged it mightve been poor messaging and do appreciate correction attempts, but the result's the same which is the point in the first place. Casual media barely has any opinion about competitive smash aside from what they're told as you can tell from pretty much any other coverage regarding smash, yet 95% of the time I see the media 'like to bring to light the fact that Brawl isn't great' happens to be when theyre reporting about PM.

For the record, I acknowledge that the media puts almost no effort into making sure they report correctly. It's so obvious to me I didnt bother saying it, but Im not ignoring that. And I dont accuse the PMBR of intentionally tossing Brawl under a bus. My problem is with negligence based on perception and a persistent issue. The media's effort is something that cant be controlled, and learning how to deal with the media and phrase things correctly and look at implications of how things are said can.

 

[lordvaati]

The fact that all the words are listed with everyone sectioning off their respective camps away from the other-hell even the fact that we all needed seperate backrooms In the first place-makes me sad every time to see.

 

[Djent]

I never argued that negative media perceptions have no effect on people's game choice. I am arguing that they did not play the major role in Brawl's decline that some of you think they have. If you've noticed, Brawl's attendance figures have been dwindling for some time, and that this started long before P:M was even getting half the attention that it does now. Things were not "fine" 6-12 months ago as @ Cassio asserts - Melee's local scene had already long since surpassed Brawl's by this time, and Brawl could only match (not exceed) Melee's entrant totals at majors (see: Apex 2013). There's probably some positive feedback effect between negative coverage and the existing decline, but you'd have to be delusional to call that one of the main reasons Brawl is suffering. The trend was already in place, so while it could be making it worse, it doesn't even begin to explain why things were already heading downhill.

I also can't bring myself to call a game that requires numerous artificial constraints (i.e. LGLs, anti-scrooging rules, and barely-enforceable IDC bans) all for the sake of one character "fine competitively," no matter how much I enjoy watching it and find myself wishing I could say otherwise. I also don't think Japan awakened us to the "unbrokenness" of MK, showing us the true enlightened way of playing Smash Bros. Brawl. At least, not with their largest major being won by MK and still having 4/8 of the top spots go to him. Or their local events in their strongest region almost always going to Rain or Otori. At least, their results haven't made good on the inference that MK is totally beatable on any consistent basis. People will mention players like Kie and Luminous pulling impressive upsets, while ignoring all the time(s) they get bopped as hard as Salem post-Apex. It's kind of silly that their results still get used as anti-ban evidence.

 

[Osennecho]

Can we all just agree that MK should be banned at MLG, and MLG should be treated as a revival for the game ? While I pretty much mean this in jest, when I think about it, I also honestly believe that doing so is the last chance to save the game's competitive scene.

 

[WindMajor]

How well did MK-Banned go for the latest WHOBO?

 

[Cassio]

I was going to respond to Djent's post, but then I felt these words might best come from someone else.

we had a very successful game for several years before things started to die off.

Interesting interesting, tell me more

But honestly, you also seem to be making baseless claims...I'm not sure where 'dwindling for some time' came from, where do you live? Brawl's local scene in SoCal, the hub of melee, was stronger roughly one year ago especially post Apex 2013. While nothing emulated the initial bounce Brawl got on its release, its had pretty stable attendance afterwards and Ive seen our scene in a worse condition before (right before Mike started TOing), compared to 3.5 years ago we're doing dandy. Even now a lot of the 'problems' are overblown, and its only done in comparison to melee which has benefited from massive good publicity and record-breaking numbers while Brawls were holding stable (like at Apex). I guess somehow having close to 400 entrants was a thriving scene before evo and a scene in decline afterwards. Even comparing to PM, Brawl at Apex had twice the amount of solo entrants, its massive numbers came from people who were entering melee + PM. In any case, it's not hard to see that things have changed recently, and it's easy to see what those noticable changes were. It wasnt just PM's articles though, I wouldnt say that. But I've already given the points people either agreed with or didnt respond to so I wont again.

Also Im not sure how you can stand to play any smash game if youre concerned with artificial constraints. So far it hasnt been an issue for over a decade. You also seem to have a distorted (though unfortunately common) view of the meta-game if you think it was their results that lead to MK being unbanned, although again my view on that wasnt to just force people one way or the other.

 

[Djent]

2008 - to late 2011/early 2012 is "several years," lol. I don't feel like arguing if you're just going to play word-games based on the least charitable interpretation of what I wrote, so I'll keep this one relatively short.

I don't think SoCal's scene is typical in terms of attendance rates. NY/NJ, Texas, and MW tournaments certainly weren't bringing in anywhere close to the same # of entrants in 2013 as 2010-2011. Am I crazy or remembering falsely? Because I didn't think this would be controversial. Also, the # of entrants at majors isn't the best indicator of a scene's health. Remember how Melee held the record for "largest Smash tournament" for 2 years before Apex 2012? That was before their local scene had really taken off, and before Brawl's had really taken a dive. Since I wouldn't have concluded much about the Melee scene's overall health from that one 350-man event, I won't be concluding much from Brawl's steady Apex #s when a random Tuesday night local in MA gets more entrants than most NY/NJ "regionals."

I dislike artificial constraints, but accept them as necessary...sometimes. However, I am of the view that they should not be multiplied beyond necessity. Keeping MK legal certainly seems to lead to that outcome, and I'm not sure how the game is even any better for it.

 

[Cassio]

I thought youd tell it was a joke, lol. Now that I reread your post Im pretty sure we're agreeing more or less to the same thing except the timing. 2012 I feel certain was a good year, right after Otori thats when everyone in the US finally got good at smash. 2013 post Salem was good initially too. Its somewhat hard to say because after 2009 the scenes sort of ebbed and flowed depending on how well they were organized. I dont think pound matters that much though, since at the time it was labelled one of the last big melee events and Brawls scene was young in age and organization. I also think you can't make much of a comparison with how things were after Evo, since every nostalgic adult from old smash/the fgc has time and money to enter those things now especially with all its recent publicity.

 

[Xyro77]

How well did MK-Banned go for the latest WHOBO?

Both MK banned whobo (4 and 5) went exactly as planned.

1. There was variety in the results

2. We got to see less common or rare MUs

3. Truly good players got to place well instead of having their stocks/place/money stolen by MK.

4. We got to see more stages playable

5. We actually had people who care about WF/LF/GFs.

6. The game was actually fun/fresh for once.

7. I still hold the record for the largest MK banned event in world history






On topic:

NJ isn't responsible for "killing brawl." Its the stupid TOs out there that have sucked on MKs dikc all these years. Whether they main him, 2nd him or support others who use him, these TOs allowed a character who cannot be CP (by stage or by character) to run wild for 6 years. We have had to make 4-5 rules specifically for MK. We have had to ban 4-5 (maybe more) stages because of MK. We literally have people choosing a MODDED FORM OF SMASH (B+, B-, BB, PM....ect) because of MK and other brawl related crap. MK and TOs supporting MK have ruined this game. If you guys went to a MK banned WHOBO (or any legit MK banned regional) and saw the things we did or maybe just watched the crowds reaction when they saw uncommon/rare MUs being played at high level you would understand what MK has done to this game.

 

[Karaoke Man]

Ya know even though I agree with a lot of these posts (especially Xyro's), I think there's a whoooole of subjectivity in this thread. I hear a lot of people saying stuff like:
"Brawl is just a bad game..." "It's not that competitieve" "There's just a lot of things wrong with this game". No, there's only 2 things wrong with Brawl that I'll bring up shortly, but first I want to point out something in these examples.

Brawl is only a "bad" game when it's ALWAYS Compared to Melee.

I also see a very large amount of people that are all like "Yooo, P;M is a more balanced game hurrr hurrr" when the term "balanced" in that example is already blatantly subjective; There is a very huge difference between being balanced and being like Melee. People keep saying how they just want a more "balanced" game. If that's the case then, why in Project Melee do they:

• Keep all of the technical abililites that weren't even intended to be in Melee to begin with (Wavedashing, L Cancelling, etc.)
• Make a modded form of Brawl into a replica of a pre-sequel that it was never intended to be anyway on both games.
• Making majority of the characters what somebody thinks how a Brawl character would've fit in with Melee physics. Seriously, Lucario is a totally different character now.
• Overall, just thrive to make Brawl not balanced, but more like Melee. Honestly, Brawl+ and Brawl- were the closet things they have to having Brawl being more balanced.

Don't get me wrong, I think P;M is a lot of fun as well as Melee, but P;M is not a "balanced" game by any means. It's just a replica of Melee. That's all it is and tbh, that's probably all it's ever going to be when it comes down to it. I give props to them and the game for being so popular now, but those comparisions and derogations on Brawl because of those comparisions need to stop.

but let's get back to Brawl...

Honestly, I don't even need to say what two things are wrong with Brawl, but I will anyway.

As Strong Bad's sig suggest, literally the ONLY thing wrong with Brawl and it's general metagame is META KNIGHT. That and tripping.

People will give this flaky argument that "Meta Knight isn't unstoppable", which is true, he isn't unstoppable. Heck, even the the thought of him being beaten isn't terribly untangible. However.......It's the fact that he has 3 moves that invaldates 98% of the cast as a whole makes it overwhelmingly unlikely to defeat him. You cannot counter MK with any character or any stage that doesn't involve another MK. On average, It's not viably, not even reliably agreeable.

It's doesn't matter matter if it's Final Destination, it doesn't matter if it's Smashville, it doesn't matter if it's Lylat, heck it wouldn't matter if it was Corneria, MK does not suffer any extravagant disadvantages in anything. Are people reeeeeally gonna' tell me some stupid **** like "He gets killed early!" lmao. Not only that, but all of his overwhelming traits, already overshadow any minscule disadvantage he might have. The ONLY people that will give me the arguement of "Just get better and learn the MU" are Meta Knight players in general. It's easy for them to be biased even if they're not even trying to be. I don't care what anyone says; beating MK is possible, sure, but when you lose to a Meta Knight player, you lose to more of the fact that it's Meta Knight than actually getting outplayed by the player. A character can be really good yes, but not to the point where just ONE of his moves make a character like Bowser or Link unviable no matter what region you're in. I'm not trying to take anything away from the top MK players or anyone who's good with him in terms of their skill, but he's just....too good, for his own good. My solultion to "save" Brawl from complete oblivion and to abolish all those other rules is to just have.....

The re-banning of Meta Knightttttt


Once this happens, other metagames can begin to flourish as they should have for years now and people may actually try to participate in the events again. Since they won't feel like their chances are already slaughtered before they even pay the entry fee. When you think about it, the Japanese players are probably less inclined to come to America not simply because of MK, but because of how much our top MK's (and some players in general) take complete advantage of the rules and counterpicks to attain wins. THAT's boring to watch. Or playing very "lame" in other words. Yeah, yeah it's legal, but that's the problem; it's freakin' legal. What are you seriously going to do to a MK that planks and flies underneath the stage for 8 minutes as someone other than MK? Nothing. Losing by time outs sucks and it always Will.

Seriously, keeping Meta Knight legal is like trying to rationalize selling Godzilla at the nearest Petland....


At least the Japanese players don't resort to abusing the rules to get victories. imo, along with a ban there just needs to be a 3 neutral stages and 2 or 3 counter picks:

Neutrals:

• Smashville
• Final Destination
• Battlefield

Counterpicks:

• Yoshi's Island (Brawl)
• Lylat
• Castle Siege (potentially)

That's about it. No more, no less. These stages do not encourage to play a game of time outs and rule abusing, but invites to have some clean, intense, fair and equal grounds in terms of competition. Nor will this heavily rely on super heavy counter picking;
It will mainly come down to a sheer battle of player skill and hardly anything else.

 

[Djent]

FYI, Strong Bad sigged Overswarm because he thought that post was stupid. I happen to think Brawl has other issues, but there's no denying that MK exacerbates most of them.

 

[Karaoke Man]

In my opinion, Overswarm wasn't really wrong either. I mean everybody will be like.... "yooo just pick a better character". Let's look at it from another example:

If you had a choice between an arrow and a gun, which would you choose?
Of course, you're going to go with the gun; Because it's already better than the arrow on so many levels, I can't even begin to tell you.

So now Brawl's metagame has basically been watered down to: "When in doubt, just pick MK and win!" The fatal problem is that it works nearly 100% of the time.

 

[NickRiddle]

If we ever banned MK, we should unban stages, not limit the stage list further.
We don't really want ICs to become the new MK, do we?
ICs can be stage CPed, we would put in stages so they could be CPed.
Then we standardize FLoSSing and it's all good.

 

[Karaoke Man]

Oh yeah, I was gonna' mention banning that CG too or at least putting a better cap on how long you can CG someone. I love how there's actually this obnoxious rule where "All CG's must end after 300%"

.........Really?

Who is seriously going to try to CG you to 300% When the majority of characters barely even make it passed 103%. If even THAT much. Is this a joke?
They should dumb that like waaaaaaay down. Not to like....20%, but more like 70% AT LEAST. I think IC's are broken for this reason alone. I mean, this is Brawl, not "Lethal Freeze tag" only instead, you don't freeze, you just die. One grab alone should not (imo) be the result of someone losing their entire stock. Especially if it was because of tripping.

I'd also be in agreement with the unbanning of stages if half of those stages weren't so gimmicky and/or having too many outside stage forces to decide the tide of the match.
Pokemon Stadium 1 is an instant "No" for me. It encourages too many timeouts
Jungle Japes is kiiiind of a "No" for me (though I love the stage) as well. Encourages too much planking. Which'll result in people talking about having an LGL again.
lolPictochat
Shadow Moses honestly, barely escapes my vote. Only because people will get chaingrabbed to hell and back am I inclinded to give that one a no.

I think Pokemon Stadium 2 is fine. Doesn't encourage so many timeouts like Pokemon Stadium 1.

In fact, that just might be the only stage I personally would consider unbanning.

 

[NickRiddle]

That post is hilarious.

 

[Karaoke Man]

can't tell if sarcasm or srs :U

 

[Xcano]

Brawls failure in the competition department is because it was meant for casual players.

 

[NickRiddle]

Oh yeah, I was gonna' mention banning that CG too or at least putting a better cap on how long you can CG someone. I love how there's actually this obnoxious rule where "All CG's must end after 300%"

.........Really?

Who is seriously going to try to CG you to 300% When the majority of characters barely even make it passed 103%. If even THAT much. Is this a joke?
They should dumb that like waaaaaaay down. Not to like....20%, but more like 70% AT LEAST. I think IC's are broken for this reason alone. I mean, this is Brawl, not "Lethal Freeze tag" only instead, you don't freeze, you just die. One grab alone should not (imo) be the result of someone losing their entire stock. Especially if it was because of tripping.

I'd also be in agreement with the unbanning of stages if half of those stages weren't so gimmicky and/or having too many outside stage forces to decide the tide of the match.
Pokemon Stadium 1 is an instant "No" for me. It encourages too many timeouts
Jungle Japes is kiiiind of a "No" for me (though I love the stage) as well. Encourages too much planking. Which'll result in people talking about having an LGL again.
lolPictochat
Shadow Moses honestly, barely escapes my vote. Only because people will get chaingrabbed to hell and back am I inclinded to give that one a no.

I think Pokemon Stadium 2 is fine. Doesn't encourage so many timeouts like Pokemon Stadium 1.

In fact, that just might be the only stage I personally would consider unbanning.

300% is the limit before it is considered stalling. Ice Climbers deserve to get a kill off of a grab, it's what they have. They're the only character in the game that you can reduce the damage/power by 50%.

PS1 encouraging timeouts is a stupid statement, especially with MK gone. What, Wario and Sonic are going to own the metagame now? Plus, stages like Battlefield ALREADY encourage camping, and that stage is a starter.
Japes is terrible because of the inability to hit people on the side platforms without putting yourself at a big disadvantage.
Shadow Moses Isle is absolutely an atrocious stage due to the fact that the only way to kill to the side is by breaking walls, and any stage with a permanent wall is bad as locks/CGs are now infinites.

PS2 is a very good stage.
Rainbow Cruise has NOTHING random about it. If you died, you ****ed up and spaced poorly.
Halberd/Delfino are fine stages without MK's sharking.
Frigate is a fine stage.
I mean, personally, I think Norfair is fine without MK.

Your ideas of what should and should not be banned are what I found hilarious.

 

[Cassio]

Brawls failure in the competition department is because it was meant for casual players.

Nope. PM attracts players that are less competitive but it does fine too.

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

The doom and gloom of Brawl is overblown and perhaps self-fulfulling, but the start of its recent issues only started 6-12 months ago after 5 years of doing fine. Not too hard to connect the dots here.

You mean ... around the time Smash 4 was announced?

Yeah. Dots. Connecting.

 

[Thor]

Responding to some stuff I read... I've spoilered it because a fair bit of it would be considered "off-topic" to some degree but I think it's worth stating for those who are interested...

Spoiler

It's still a competitive game because the definition of competition itself is arbitrary. It's pretty clear that Nairo is better than like 99.9...9% of players (and he has a Donkey Kong that's really good, don't give me that "He plays MK so he's not good" **** which is like saying "Mango plays Fox or Falco so he's not actually better than Phish-it" or whatever in Melee) and M2K is in a similar skill level. We can set up a definition, as Scar tried to (never mind the factual errors in that post "Ganon is negative on hit of his dair at low percents" [learn to autocancel you bonehead, then do it three times into a usmash on Snake for that 60% combo]), but people will invariably skew the definition to suit their argument (happens all the time, trust me, I've been on a policy debate team for four years). Scar's definition is actually pretty good, except I disagree that in Melee the player of more skill wins more often than in Brawl. The player who is more on point wins that day, unless their character is just *** (ex Kirby) and the other guy is not too much worse. MK is better than everyone else, but that doesn't make the game less competitive or Melee more competitive because Fox has 4 characters even with him (Fox, Marth, Falco, Samus).

Brawl failing (not dead yet...) is because Sakurai is an *** though. I can't say I know the truth value of this statement, but apparently, after the third party characters, Sakurai was convinced the best character was Snake (or Olimar or Diddy Kong, there was a fourth I heard), and he REALLY hated that idea [especially Snake], so he made a character designed to beat all of them. That character was named Meta Knight. [Incidentally I heard this character was designed to be equal in skill by no one, but that when he saw MK was equal with Pikachu he decided that was cool.]

His testing is obviously defunct and in some ways hilarious (because he didn't know how to infinite CG or he'd have seen it's a non-issue, but Sakurai wasn't bad at balance. He deliberately unbalanced the game by including MK. Yet he also didn't want to make MK TOO good (maybe he failed?) which is why all of those characters can be played to beat MK. And to hide this from the casuals he figured would buy the game, he made MK fairly light and most his non-smashes with low knockback or knockback scaling (talking 'bout you shuttle loop) so that casuals wouldn't notice.

I really like Brawl, and I'll admit that character selection can **** you over. But let's be real, you don't lose to someone because they played MK, you lose to someone because there is both a chance they are better and/or you tripped.

To say you lost to MK because MK is absurd on face. The fallacy here is that you made a conscious choice not to play MK. It's like starving to death and just before dying blaming people because they brought food that you didn't like the taste of (ex: they offered to feed you bread and spinach but you wanted cheese too so you didn't eat it). If you choose to not play MK, it's your own damn fault for "losing to MK." You had a choice at the character select screen and made a (by your own argument irrational) decision not to maximize your odds of winning. And at the end of the day, YOU PLAY TO WIN THE GAME (or else why the hell are you playing at a competitive level?! Like, what the heck?) And if you're like, "That's lame" or "I'm not good at MK", well if it's lame, that's how the game is made, Melee you maximize odds by playing Fox or Falco if you start from nowhere, and if you're bad at MK, then your maximized odds are elsewhere or else you spent your time practicing poorly, your own fault. Of course, none of this actually discusses why spectatorship is dying.

For those of you who didn't read it, it doesn't address dying numbers of players. There are a couple choices. I'm not clear on how much advertising dollars matter, but if they don't, don't worry about spectatorship at all - make people see that playing the game is fun and involve them (also, now that I've attended a tournament, watching matches online is way more fun, even the recent MK dittos). People don't watch our stuff anymore, but we play, have fun, and can still have tournaments, where each TO makes the rules - we get to enjoy our game, and if people want to watch, they can watch how we play and if they don't like it, stop watching. That's incredibly narcissistic, but we're not entertainers - last I checked people who play Melee or Brawl or Smash 64 or PM play it first and foremost because it's fun. The scene won't really grow, and shrink over time, but those who like the game can milk it for what's left. Probably the antithesis of the OP, but it's an option.

The above assumes that we won't have major people quit and that we believe spectatorship doesn't increase the number of players much and/or we don't care to raise the number [because many blame current rules for lower spectatorship). 1st assumption is questionable and the second I don't know about, the 3rd is patently false so this suggestion has questionable merit but it's worth putting out.

We can also alter rulesets. It would spawn more characters but also drive some players out of the scene, not necessarily more than would join. There would be a value judgement about how to determine it, and the pro/anti-MKers have made their choices. I'm honestly not sure (initially, I'm anti-MK ban because banning a character is lame, although Melee banned MK too), and there's an argument to made for "Your MU is not -3 which means this should be doable, you just need to be good at punishment (Armada's advice to always improve it) and not get it (thanks to Isai for that gold [I'm dead serious here too])." That said, since his closet thing to a CP is Pikachu on like PS1 or BF or maybe FD (as per current MU chart) or else ICs/Diddy/Falco on FD (don't know where Snake goes), it's not necessarily awful to try banning him.

We could try holding MK-banned and MK-legal tournaments at the same place. Improbable, but I'll say it anyway.

Perhaps a better solution is to legalize MK on a round-by-round basis only when both players agree (if someone is an Ike main, they won't deal with an MK while the MK dittos and people like me who don't mind MK can still face him). MK mains need a backup, but top ones do (Ally, M2K, Nairo) and this would still gain the benefits banning him would have for the Ikes and Toon Links out there. Maybe something about stage-lists per round being changed as this changes. While obviously very messy, this could allow Zero-Nairo GFs to happen IF both players get there where they don't always use MK and still play at their best levels. Decisions could be by agreement at the start of a set (as funny a suggestion as Judgement would be, that would forever leave tournaments marred by "If only I'd gotten the 9..." for just choosing to legalize a character.) This might also just have the function of "MK is only legal in MK dittos" but it would still allow some to leave MK up (I could see, for example, DEHF vs Ally MK being legal but a Falco vs Snake round 1). It would also let newer players not fear MK because they can just strike him.

As a last suggestion, we could make sure to stream and record the "sillier" events, like items on, every stage on, all character select is random battles that sometimes show up as side-events, and promoting Ganon-gaunlets and make new stuf likef Puff-parades or whatever. This would attract REALLY casual people and might suck them into the competitive scene.

Side note: The title is an exaggeration. Everyone who made a decision to quit Brawl because of NJ is why the scene died/is dying. If no one had quit Brawl and NJ had still done what they did, well we'd still have Keitaro, MikeHAZE, and Xyro doing stuff (think those were the names in the OP) and way more smashers. Everyone who turned their back on Brawl helped kill it a little bit at a time, sort of like how if a store goes bankrupt, every dollar that they didn't get (up to a point) was needed to bankrupt it, because they otherwise might've had the money to keep the business open.

 

[Karaoke Man]

300% is the limit before it is considered stalling. Ice Climbers deserve to get a kill off of a grab, it's what they have. They're the only character in the game that you can reduce the damage/power by 50%.

PS1 encouraging timeouts is a stupid statement, especially with MK gone. What, Wario and Sonic are going to own the metagame now? Plus, stages like Battlefield ALREADY encourage camping, and that stage is a starter.
Japes is terrible because of the inability to hit people on the side platforms without putting yourself at a big disadvantage.
Shadow Moses Isle is absolutely an atrocious stage due to the fact that the only way to kill to the side is by breaking walls, and any stage with a permanent wall is bad as locks/CGs are now infinites.

PS2 is a very good stage.
Rainbow Cruise has NOTHING random about it. If you died, you ****ed up and spaced poorly.
Halberd/Delfino are fine stages without MK's sharking.
Frigate is a fine stage.
I mean, personally, I think Norfair is fine without MK.

Your ideas of what should and should not be banned are what I found hilarious.

Is Delfino still legal? I legitimately don't remember lol

Another thing is that I was just giving examples of stages that probably were going to come up anyway. Japes I threw out there because you mentioned unbanning stages. Which of course means stages that were legal in the past.
That's what I was saying about Shadow Moses. Nobody's gonna' wanna' get Dedederp'd and shine grinded against the wall, but I digress on that.

I'm not saying that they don't deserve that, but why is it only until 300% that it's considered stalling? This isn't Endless Brawl and nobody hardly even lives up to that percentage anyway when it only takes up to about 130-140% to get the kill from the CG most of the time. Granted, no. I don't know everything about IC's, but imo 300% is a bit of a stretch in terms of stalling. I'm open to enlightenment, but all I know is that even without the CG, they STILL aren't exactly "free".

No, they probably wouldn't outright own the metagame now, but they will definitely have more of a chance to shine just like all the other non-MK characters. Other more campy characters like Wario or Sonic.....they exist too. Pit tho

PS1 encourages timeouts much more than the other stages. On Battlefield, you're not hiding behind a mountain, ducking under a flaming tree or even camping from that derpy windmill for roughly 30 seconds at a time. Nor are you doing that on any other legal stage aside from maybe the 2nd part of Castle Siege. You just proved my point on PS1 encouraging more timeouts than any of the neutrals or any of the current CP's. Yeah, Battlefield encourages camping a bit, sure because Brawl is more of a campy game in general. PS1 though? Have fun with that one.

Lol @ Rainbow Cruise. More along the lines of trying not to get gimped by the movement/influence of stage while trying to fight your opponent at the same time. Honestly, you can **** up on any stage and that same principle will apply. I mean in that case, let's just throw Mushroomy Kingdom or even Big Blue in there while we're at it. It may not be random, but outside of that little boat, the rest of RC is buns in terms of a more steady, balanced fighting ground. Aside from Norfair, I agree on the rest of the stages you mentioned.

The initial idea I was going for in my first post was stated above; "It will mainly come down to a sheer battle of player skill and hardly anything else." Or at least as close as you can possibly get to it. Stages like Rainbow Cruise kind of bypasses that idea by a more significant margin.

 

[link2702]

Ya know even though I agree with a lot of these posts (especially Xyro's), I think there's a whoooole of subjectivity in this thread. I hear a lot of people saying stuff like:
"Brawl is just a bad game..." "It's not that competitieve" "There's just a lot of things wrong with this game". No, there's only 2 things wrong with Brawl that I'll bring up shortly, but first I want to point out something in these examples.

Brawl is only a "bad" game when it's ALWAYS Compared to Melee.

I also see a very large amount of people that are all like "Yooo, P;M is a more balanced game hurrr hurrr" when the term "balanced" in that example is already blatantly subjective; There is a very huge difference between being balanced and being like Melee. People keep saying how they just want a more "balanced" game. If that's the case then, why in Project Melee do they:

• Keep all of the technical abililites that weren't even intended to be in Melee to begin with (Wavedashing, L Cancelling, etc.)
• Make a modded form of Brawl into a replica of a pre-sequel that it was never intended to be anyway on both games.
• Making majority of the characters what somebody thinks how a Brawl character would've fit in with Melee physics. Seriously, Lucario is a totally different character now.
• Overall, just thrive to make Brawl not balanced, but more like Melee. Honestly, Brawl+ and Brawl- were the closet things they have to having Brawl being more balanced.

Don't get me wrong, I think P;M is a lot of fun as well as Melee, but P;M is not a "balanced" game by any means. It's just a replica of Melee. That's all it is and tbh, that's probably all it's ever going to be when it comes down to it. I give props to them and the game for being so popular now, but those comparisions and derogations on Brawl because of those comparisions need to stop.

but let's get back to Brawl...

Honestly, I don't even need to say what two things are wrong with Brawl, but I will anyway.

As Strong Bad's sig suggest, literally the ONLY thing wrong with Brawl and it's general metagame is META KNIGHT. That and tripping.

People will give this flaky argument that "Meta Knight isn't unstoppable", which is true, he isn't unstoppable. Heck, even the the thought of him being beaten isn't terribly untangible. However.......It's the fact that he has 3 moves that invaldates 98% of the cast as a whole makes it overwhelmingly unlikely to defeat him. You cannot counter MK with any character or any stage that doesn't involve another MK. On average, It's not viably, not even reliably agreeable.

It's doesn't matter matter if it's Final Destination, it doesn't matter if it's Smashville, it doesn't matter if it's Lylat, heck it wouldn't matter if it was Corneria, MK does not suffer any extravagant disadvantages in anything. Are people reeeeeally gonna' tell me some stupid **** like "He gets killed early!" lmao. Not only that, but all of his overwhelming traits, already overshadow any minscule disadvantage he might have. The ONLY people that will give me the arguement of "Just get better and learn the MU" are Meta Knight players in general. It's easy for them to be biased even if they're not even trying to be. I don't care what anyone says; beating MK is possible, sure, but when you lose to a Meta Knight player, you lose to more of the fact that it's Meta Knight than actually getting outplayed by the player. A character can be really good yes, but not to the point where just ONE of his moves make a character like Bowser or Link unviable no matter what region you're in. I'm not trying to take anything away from the top MK players or anyone who's good with him in terms of their skill, but he's just....too good, for his own good. My solultion to "save" Brawl from complete oblivion and to abolish all those other rules is to just have.....

The re-banning of Meta Knightttttt


Once this happens, other metagames can begin to flourish as they should have for years now and people may actually try to participate in the events again. Since they won't feel like their chances are already slaughtered before they even pay the entry fee. When you think about it, the Japanese players are probably less inclined to come to America not simply because of MK, but because of how much our top MK's (and some players in general) take complete advantage of the rules and counterpicks to attain wins. THAT's boring to watch. Or playing very "lame" in other words. Yeah, yeah it's legal, but that's the problem; it's freakin' legal. What are you seriously going to do to a MK that planks and flies underneath the stage for 8 minutes as someone other than MK? Nothing. Losing by time outs sucks and it always Will.

Seriously, keeping Meta Knight legal is like trying to rationalize selling Godzilla at the nearest Petland....


At least the Japanese players don't resort to abusing the rules to get victories. imo, along with a ban there just needs to be a 3 neutral stages and 2 or 3 counter picks:

Neutrals:

• Smashville
• Final Destination
• Battlefield

Counterpicks:

• Yoshi's Island (Brawl)
• Lylat
• Castle Siege (potentially)

That's about it. No more, no less. These stages do not encourage to play a game of time outs and rule abusing, but invites to have some clean, intense, fair and equal grounds in terms of competition. Nor will this heavily rely on super heavy counter picking;
It will mainly come down to a sheer battle of player skill and hardly anything else.

I know i'm being more or less an ass for nit-picking this out from all of what you posted....but....


do you realize L-cancelling was actually an intentional mechanic in both smash64 and melee? hell it was even listed as an advanced tech on smash64's official website, sakurai just called it "smooth landing"

go look up the archive of smash64's official website if you doubt me.

 

[EpixAura]

A lot of errors in the OP, but I do agree with the overall point that MK has been detrimental for the game in exactly the same way a lot of people predicted.
I don't really think we can solely blame New Jersey, but they're New Jersey, so I'll blame them anyway.

 

[Karaoke Man]

do you realize L-cancelling was actually an intentional mechanic in both smash64 and melee? hell it was even listed as an advanced tech on smash64's official website, sakurai just called it "smooth

Actually, you're very right. I totally forgot about that. lol This only applies to stuff like wave dashing then.

Also, Thor. Nobody is saying they didn't get outplayed by the Meta Knight player. but that's the problem; the Meta Knight player. A large quantity of picking the most obnoxious character that invalidates the cast is like a forest fire for a diversity of Metagames. You can beat majority of characters with just tornado alone.

 

[Cassio]

I don't have anything against Brawl players (some of my closest friends and favorite players actually were primarily Brawl players) but even the Brawl community isn't very passionate about your game and haven't been for years. Anytime the Melee community does something that took a lot of effort someone in the Brawl community is there asking why we didn't include them; the reason is that time and time again the Brawl community has shown that it does not have the work ethic to put in the effort to accomplish things. We're having trouble finding community leaders to lead the Brawl section of the Smashboards rankings because Brawlers just don't care enough. Riding off the fact that Brawl is the most recent Smash game for so many years to populate your events has made your community lazy and shaky; in contrast, the Melee (and now PM) communities had to fight and claw their way through stigmas of age and illegitimacy to get to where they are today. Yeah, Brawl probably would have had an easier time if people didn't bash it often, but that just comes with the territory of competing games in a limited niche. If the Brawl community cared enough about their game they would have succeeded in spite of this, and we didn't see that. Sorry dudes. 5 years ago you were on the other side of the barricade. We didn't play the victim, we just fought and won. Hope Smash 4 works out for ya.

Also other things aside, this mindset and obliviousness is what I was referring to with the mentality amongst its leaders, quoting you is conventient but I could definitely find similar sentiments from others. Not even trying to be mean. (Even in this thread, members were quick to point fingers everywhere except themselves and then downplay screw ups.)

PM and melee didnt have to fight and claw through hardly anything. I mean PM might eventually, but among other things they've been babied the whole way as smashers, especially the Brawl scene, support these games. Not to say I can't appreciate the effort individual scenes put in to expand, and yes organization lately has fallen in the Brawl scene, but trying to compare their difficulty to the headway Brawl had to deal with or pretending Brawl wasn't providing training wheel/senior service assistance to other scenes the last several years as you trivialize its work ethic you benefited from is a joke.

The result of this weird mentality leads to passive or assertively undermining Brawls ability to do well, or to turn the other way and trivialize such occurrences.

NJ isn't responsible for "killing brawl." Its the stupid TOs out there that have sucked on MKs dikc all these years. Whether they main him, 2nd him or support others who use him, these TOs allowed a character who cannot be CP (by stage or by character) to run wild for 6 years. We have had to make 4-5 rules specifically for MK. We have had to ban 4-5 (maybe more) stages because of MK. We literally have people choosing a MODDED FORM OF SMASH (B+, B-, BB, PM....ect) because of MK and other brawl related crap. MK and TOs supporting MK have ruined this game. If you guys went to a MK banned WHOBO (or any legit MK banned regional) and saw the things we did or maybe just watched the crowds reaction when they saw uncommon/rare MUs being played at high level you would understand what MK has done to this game.

It was the debate more than anything. If MK was banned the result mightve been slightly better or worse but overall the same. I think its something better handled in retrospect, but I dont think any competitive game has had to deal with something like that before. At least not on a scale so big.

 

[Xyro77]

Also other things aside, this mindset and obliviousness is what I was referring to with the mentality amongst its leaders, quoting you is conventient but I could definitely find similar sentiments from others. Not even trying to be mean. (Even in this thread, members were quick to point fingers everywhere except themselves and then downplay screw ups.)

PM and melee didnt have to fight and claw through hardly anything. I mean PM might eventually, but among other things they've been babied the whole way as smashers, especially the Brawl scene, support these games. Not to say I can't appreciate the effort individual scenes put in to expand, and yes organization lately has fallen in the Brawl scene, but trying to compare their difficulty to the headway Brawl had to deal with or pretending Brawl wasn't providing training wheel/senior service assistance to other scenes the last several years as you trivialize its work ethic you benefited from is a joke.

The result of this weird mentality leads to passive or assertively undermining Brawls ability to do well, or to turn the other way and trivialize such occurrences.

It was the debate more than anything. If MK was banned the result mightve been slightly better or worse but overall the same. I think its something better handled in retrospect, but I dont think any competitive game has had to deal with something like that before. At least not on a scale so big.

There have been enough MK banned events to know what happens when he's gone.

1. More variety in results (always a good thing)

2. More "fun" (relative, yes, but overall I've seen more "this is awesome" than I did in MK legal events)

3. Rare/uncommon MUs (which promotes growth in those characters)

4. More stages are available (again, more variety and growth for MUs on that stage.

5. Counter pick system actually works (can't beat ICs? Go to RC and pick rob. If it was MK legal, the IC would have went MK and then the rob is DOUBLE screwed)



And the debate did not stop/slow or alter brawls growth. The total dominance of MK did. People have literally marked off 50% of the character roster because even if they would do ok with their chosen character, all it takes is one MK to ruin it because he has no counter, no weakness. People have banned stage after stage not because of marth or falco but because of MK. He has broken the CP system that works for melee/ssb64 and non MK brawl. 4-5 rules (IDC/scrooging/planking/no double MK in teams...ect) were created solely for MK in order to keep him legal and yet he STILL continues/continues to dominate. How many times have you seen or heard of people dropping their main for MK or picking up MK as a secondary? Too many.

None of this can be said for any other character^

 

[Osennecho]

You know **** is real when Xyro makes a serious post. Like I truly agree with everything he just said.

 

[Cassio]

@ Xyro77 Aside from the first one everything else is so subjective and/or region dependant, lol. Thats why I say the debate is what caused the most issues, you have that perspective and then you have a large part of the community that wants it another way (less stages, MK legal, etc etc.) and trying to push one group of people to do it there way just led to a lot of bitterness in the end.

 

[Xyro77]

I guess you were not in the BBR when we collect all the results for MK banned events. Literally everything I said came to be true from all regions.

So in truth, only number 2 could be seen as subjective. Everything else is literal fact. Me and several others in the BBR saw the results/held events that created the data. I've been around. Very very long time.