On the topic of Fox/Falco hate

[GaretHax]

The problem with that philosophy, Garethax, is that anytime a character gets anywhere near the potential of spacies, they get nerfed or "tweaked".
Because everyone is so eager to jump the gun and call something "janky" or "OP" without assessing it honestly. Also, melee isn't some kind of perfect standard in which everything should try to live up to it. It has plenty of issues, and sometimes making things more "melee-like" is a horrible design decision.

Honestly I agree, Melee isn't perfect. And making knee-jerk reactions when balancing is never a good idea. But I'm not argueing that, nor am I trying to justify any nerfs other characters have received (besides NTSC Shiek d-throw being tweaked lol, that needed to happen). As long as spacies remain untouched it may be silly to tweak other characters in a negative fashion (though personally i think oucario and Ike feel much better to play as, and against after 2.1). But that's kind of the problem its all subjective. I don't feel that high tiers are so far beneath space animals that they cannot be brought up to the same level without the addition of anything silly, but just by being made more concise and effective in design.

 

[Doctor X]

Spacies are to Melee what Terran were to SC1.

Yes, they have a bunch of crap that sounds really broken on paper. Yes, they have a bunch of crap that probably wasn't intended by the developers that players abuse as much as possible. Yes, they regularly crush many a noob who doesn't know how to deal with the aforementioned bunches of crap...

But guess what? They're fun-- both to play, and to watch. They require faster hands and are much less forgiving of mistakes in execution than other races/characters, resulting in flashy, back-and-forth matches instead of one player slowly pulling ahead and staying there every single time. People love them-- for good reason-- and they're not going anywhere if this community has anything to say about it. They are iconic in competitive play, and the only people who think otherwise are just... loud... quite unfortunately so for the rest of us. :\

 

[0RLY]

Games are not fun when your character gets nerfed. Always buff other characters. Rarely, if ever, nerf.
2.1 Ike was fine the way he was, and dare I say, Lucario too. Sonic on the other hand was ********. And still is.

Leave fox and falco as they are.
Also, Ness should be able to PKT again if the first one hits something and deals damage. So he doesn't randomly die when he tries to recover and hits a just spawned smashville balloon.

 

[BTmoney]

I am also against nerfing the flag ship characters that have been the face of this game.
It's not like either of them actually incentive mindless play or cannot be dealt with.
It is not as if they have no flaws in their neutral game either.
Also I agree with the notion that no one likes getting their characters nerfed.
Giving other characters better OoS options and giving them options that are safer on shield will make space animals comparatively less dominant. It will be hard to do (and in the short term it is easier to nerf them) and will take a communal effort but it is the correct way to go about this.
If the most difficult character to play was the next hardest underneath Falco then I don't think this game would be as strong and developed as it is today.

edit:
excuse the egregious spelling mistakes lul I didn't read that before hand

 

[UltiMario]

It's not spacies or other top tiers that need to be nerfed (that includes Sheik).

It's that other characters need to be on spacie levels.

One of the few characters that even approached spacie level was Ike. He had some dumb **** that needed objective improvements in game design (new sword sweetspot system, 3 frames before QD jump), but his other nerfs were needless, he was actually a well balanced character in regards to the point that the game should be balanced around- Melee's Top/High tier.

Spacie hate goes away once everyone is spacie good.

 

[Mr.Pickle]

I've always thought that balancing this game's roster around the pinnacle of meta game perfection, that is the space animals, a bad idea. They should just focus on preserving the cast's individual play styles by making sure their hitboxes match their animations, making sure a character doesn't have a weakness so severe that it leads to an almost unwinable match up, but also doesn't have a strength that shuts down 2/3rds of the cast, and provides a unique play style to provide incentive to play that character, each with their own set of weaknesses and strengths. Other wise whats the point of having more than 2 characters if everyone has every option available open to them.

Also I don't see how the very light versions of the pal nerfs wouldn't be an easy middle ground between the people that want them to remain
unchanged, and the people that feel like they need brought down....but with that said, maybe we should do a poll on this topic. Its pretty divided in here lol.

 

[BTmoney]

I've always thought that balancing this game's roster around the pinnacle of meta game perfection, that is the space animals, a bad idea. They should just focus on preserving the cast's individual play styles by making sure their hitboxes match their animations, making sure a character doesn't have a weakness so severe that it leads to an almost unwinable match up, but also doesn't have a strength that shuts down 2/3rds of the cast, and provides a unique play style to provide incentive to play that character, each with their own set of weaknesses and strengths. Other wise whats the point of having more than 2 characters if everyone has every option available open to them.

Also I don't see how the very light versions of the pal nerfs wouldn't be an easy middle ground between the people that want them to remain
unchanged, and the people that feel like they need brought down....but with that said, maybe we should do a poll on this topic. Its pretty divided in here lol.

I am very against a poll. Look at the PM MU chart. I'd rather have the backroom or people who display the rare ability to form coherent thoughts decide.
Lol those were three very backhanded sentences. Excuse me. But I stand by that.

Let me push you and ask what do you suggest? You said what you don't suggest.

 

[Kink-Link5]

Games are not fun when your character gets nerfed. Always buff other characters. Rarely, if ever, nerf.
2.1 Ike was fine the way he was, and dare I say, Lucario too. Sonic on the other hand was ********. And still is.

Leave fox and falco as they are.
Also, Ness should be able to PKT again if the first one hits something and deals damage. So he doesn't randomly die when he tries to recover and hits a just spawned smashville balloon.

A thousand times all of this. Ike was dominent in a metagame that lasted about 6 months before tapering off, and Lucario was picking up where Ike left off toward the end of the one year development of a newborn metagame, but both, particularly Ike, were a couple of the only characters to receive straight up nerfs beyond tweaks. Side B is only slower to jump out of, Neutral B is only smaller and has weaker armor, etc.. I understand fully that design comes before balance, but the only thing Ike's and Lucario's designs particularly proved is that the characters were easy to pickup because they had braindead strategies.

Sonic is one of the most poorly designed things to happen in fighting games, with no offense to the work the PMBR does. His entire character is structured in such a way that he'll either be stupidly good, laughably bad, or horribly polarized, and the same can be said for Squirtle. It would have to be incredibly hard work designing around these kind of characters for them to end up the way they did, so I sincerely wish the PMBR luck in coming up with better compromise for their inherently silly designs.

Ness's recovery wouldn't make him any better, but at least he wouldn't have his already flawed deign exploited as strongly.

 

[Mr.Pickle]

I really, really need to go to bed lol. So I'll touch up on the first part of your post, sorry you'll have to wait until later tomorrow for my own opinion of changes to fox and falco.

People tend to forget that most of the people in the back room are just regular smashers with a lot of coding knowledge, so there is just as much silliness in their ranks as there is in the general public, you just don't see it (which btw I respect them for trying to keep up an image of professionalism). So I feel like that in order to achieve the best smash game possible to us, the whole community is going to have to get involved, at least to an extent. Because isn't that kinda the point to the demos in the first place?

 

[BTmoney]

I really, really need to go to bed lol. So I'll touch up on the first part of your post, sorry you'll have to wait until later tomorrow for my own opinion of changes to fox and falco.

People tend to forget that most of the people in the back room are just regular smashers with a lot of coding knowledge, so there is just as much silliness in their ranks as there is in the general public, you just don't see it (which btw I respect them for trying to keep up an image of professionalism). So I feel like that in order to achieve the best smash game possible to us, the whole community is going to have to get involved, at least to an extent. Because isn't that kinda the point to the demos in the first place?

Rest assured I am not assuming that backroomers are of superior intellect or are capable of deducting things that we peasants cannot.

Red part:
Possibly but that is where I disagree. When you look at people's backroom applications, you can see that they display the ability to communicate through text, think logically, and think objectively. Some more than others but all at a level that is at least not offensive. Plenty of us in the community are more than capable of being backroom members if you take out all the politics and join date nonsense.
I would argue once you display that ability to think soundly and acknowledge that you can think soundly but intentionally choose to make not objectively sound decisions then you become beyond stupid and should have your human rights and thought processing ability revoked.



Essentially I am saying I trust the backroom over the same people who made the PM MU chart. Unless people who display the ability to think coherently get more influence or something which likely won't happen. Not everyone in the community has a vetted opinion while everyone in the backroom is at least somewhat vetted. This is pessimistic but logical imo.

 

[Doctor X]

So I feel like that in order to achieve the best smash game possible to us, the whole community is going to have to get involved, at least to an extent.

I think the key phrase here is "at least to an extent." Community-focused development is great and all, but getting anything done requires decisions, and effective decisions require relatively small governing bodies. We just need to be sure that the governing body consists of strong decision-makers instead of derps who rate matchups 100-0 because their big brother beats them all the time.

In my experience the "whole community" has never proven itself to be much better than a squabbling mass of trash talk and ad hoc arguments to defend emotional convictions. The phrase "tires don exits" is legendary in this community for a reason. I am completely okay with some "opinions" not being considered by the PMBR, because some "opinions" are just not worthy of consideration. They're not really opinions at all; they're more like "alternative facts." You don't like something? Pretend it isn't true and defend that notion to the death.

It happens to this day in these very boards, even when the game being discussed is dedicated to high-level play.. :\

 

[B.W.]

The whole community was involved in Brawl+...

I think that says enough.

 

[BTmoney]

The whole community was involved in Brawl+...

I think that says enough.

Elaborate please? I am not familiar with the semantics and reception of Brawl+.

 

[B.W.]

All you really need to know is the process of making Brawl+ was really bad.

 

[Doctor X]

I didn't play Brawl+ but from what I've gathered, Brawl+ wasn't a definitive mod so much as a collection of mod codes that players could decide to apply or not apply individually. One person might want melee airdodges put back in, but not wavedashing, while another person might want the whole airdodge mechanic but make L-cancelling automatic. It was basically left up to the community-- be they individual players or tournament organizers-- to decide what changes should be used and what shouldn't.

You can imagine how that went down. >.<

 

[The_NZA]

Spacies are to Melee what Terran were to SC1.

Yes, they have a bunch of crap that sounds really broken on paper. Yes, they have a bunch of crap that probably wasn't intended by the developers that players abuse as much as possible. Yes, they regularly crush many a noob who doesn't know how to deal with the aforementioned bunches of crap...

But guess what? They're fun-- both to play, and to watch. They require faster hands and are much less forgiving of mistakes in execution than other races/characters, resulting in flashy, back-and-forth matches instead of one player slowly pulling ahead and staying there every single time. People love them-- for good reason-- and they're not going anywhere if this community has anything to say about it. They are iconic in competitive play, and the only people who think otherwise are just... loud... quite unfortunately so for the rest of us. :\

No one disagrees with you, but there's not anything fun as a spectator in seeing a character die at 80% to a move with many options equipped on a character who already has more options than anyone else.

 

[Spiffykins]

Games are not fun when your character gets nerfed. Always buff other characters. Rarely, if ever, nerf.
2.1 Ike was fine the way he was, and dare I say, Lucario too. Sonic on the other hand was ********. And still is.

I can't speak for Ike, but as someone who plays Lucario, I don't agree. Being able to grab or dodge so easily any time you hit someone's shield is stupid (especially grab). At least Fox just pressures your shield until you roll away. Lucario made shields all but useless against him. That's game breaking design and I'm glad he can't do that anymore. The problem is that it came at the price of a huge portion of his combo and kill power, as well as one of his best mobility tools, and that's where all the salt pours in from.

It's also a problem that some people still seem to think that Lucario makes shields useless, but maybe I should leave that be for the sake of staying on topic.

 

[Vashimus]

When you look at people's backroom applications, you can see that they display the ability to communicate through text, think logically, and think objectively. Some more than others but all at a level that is at least not offensive. Plenty of us in the community are more than capable of being backroom members if you take out all the politics and join date nonsense.
I would argue once you display that ability to think soundly and acknowledge that you can think soundly but intentionally choose to make not objectively sound decisions then you become beyond stupid and should have your human rights and thought processing ability revoked.

Essentially I am saying I trust the backroom over the same people who made the PM MU chart. Unless people who display the ability to think coherently get more influence or something which likely won't happen. Not everyone in the community has a vetted opinion while everyone in the backroom is at least somewhat vetted. This is pessimistic but logical imo.

While a lot the PMBR do think objectively and logically.....most of the time.... That's not why they were chosen. Experience and knowledge hold more weight in the community than anything else. Actions always speak louder than words. A player could be on here and rarely contribute to discussions, only getting serious maybe like once in a blue moon, yet if they're consistantly going to tournaments and performing well, he'll generally be respected more by the community, and the PMBR as a result. People find it easy to dismiss someone based on the content of their posts or whatnot, but then are quick to sing a different tune when they see them consistantly winning tournaments. They know at the very least, wow, this guy must know his ****. If we're gauging player credibility based on those who can "communicate through text logically and objectively", which everyone here can do to some extent, there's no dividing line for those who actually do know what they're talking about and those talking out their ass.

 

[Doctor X]

No one disagrees with you, but there's not anything fun as a spectator in seeing a character die at 80% to a move with many options equipped on a character who already has more options than anyone else.

There is, because if he uses that move poorly, many characters have the potential to kill him from any percent with the following punish. The difference between a well-placed upsmash and a poorly-placed one can be very small, and even a slight amount of hesitation can be a missed opportunity.

Let's say your opponent just hit the ground and techrolled. You have to decide, very quickly, whether or not you're in position to upsmash them out of the lag. If you decide to go for it and you're right, you take a stock. If you go for it and you're wrong, though, they get to shieldgrab you out of the upsmash and potentially take one of your stocks with a chaingrab. If you pause in making this decision even for a moment, what could have been a potential upsmash becomes no opportunity at all. Maybe you could have had a guaranteed upsmash, but you didn't act fast enough. Because of this your opponent gets to live a bit longer, and if you can't fight the instinct of going for it anyway you might wind up losing a stock of your own.

It's a character of extremes that requires highly trained reactions to be played well... again, absolutely iconic in high level play. Historically, most people have been fine with Fox's killing power as compared to, say, Peach, because Peach doesn't theoretically die every time you grab her.

 

[BTmoney]

While a lot the PMBR do think objectively and logically.....most of the time.... That's not why they were chosen.

*I did not say that is why they were chosen. Why they were chosen is irrelevant as I mentioned before. I just argue that the average PMBR member is marginally and subtly more informed than the average community member. I think that is a fair and there is no evidence suggesting otherwise. If the hypothetical average competence rank of the PMBR is 50.1 and the average community member's competence rank is 50 I'll take the PMBR every time. That is a watered down version of what I am saying. It only makes sense that the most ignorant person in the community is more ignorant than the most ignorant member of the PMBR*

Experience and knowledge hold more weight in the community than anything else.

*Exactly but you contradict that immediately afterwards.*

Actions always speak louder than words. A player could be on here and rarely contribute to discussions, only getting serious maybe like once in a blue moon, yet if they're consistantly going to tournaments and performing well, he'll generally be respected more by the community,

*^^^^This right here. That does not mean that he should be. It doesn't mean he shouldn't be either.*


and the PMBR as a result. People find it easy to dismiss someone based on the content of their posts or whatnot, but then are quick to sing a different tune when they see them consistantly winning tournaments. They know at the very least, wow, this guy must know his ****. If we're gauging player credibility based on those who can "communicate through text logically and objectively", which everyone here can do to some extent, there's no dividing line for those who actually do know what they're talking about and those talking out their ***.

*Good thing I am not one of those people. It may sound like I am bragging and I am not. I am just saying a player who makes bad decisions or has unnecessarily bad habits/decision making (all things that come with a lack of understanding) will not impress me or garner my respect no matter how much they win or who they beat. At least until they shift the metagame so heavily that whoever makes the most bad decisions wins consistently.*

Many players have habits and play styles that are not conducive to winning. I argue that one should garner more respect for understanding the game and complex processes (involving decisions) than someone who is good at the game but constantly chooses sub par or less than optimal things. I would call that player a bad player. Bad players can still win. A few people come to mind who fit that bill but they are better than me and I have no intention of calling them out because this isn't malicious. Just informative and my opinion.

It sounds like you are saying good players win because they do everything "right" (or some degree of that). Right meaning it worked and they won so it was right. That is not an idea that I subscribe to.

If you can do both then you are an anomaly. KK is an example of that. I have yet to see him contradict himself or say anything that is evidently illogical or comparatively bad and he's obviously a proven player.

 

[Oro?!]

If everyone knew the best option already in every matchup this game would suck. Objectively, you could say that players of Melee Vets have their characters down to a science, but I would argue they just rely on generalizations and experience from Melee rather than actually understanding how a Melee vet fits into PM.

tl;dr a lot of spacies win by nair plane instead of matchup knowledge, and everyone who plays this game is bad by your definition.

 

[Deleted member]

if everyone knew the best option and actually played to it, this game would be awesome because you could actively see how people innovate around higher level, proper play rather than just watching 4 players do it at every national and jerking to them blindly.

*almost* everyone who plays this game is bad in my opinion. the degrees of badness simply vary.

 

[BTmoney]

Which is fine lol. Some are less bad then others so some are comparatively good.

edit:
inb4 umbreon...

 

[Oro?!]

if everyone knew the best option and actually played to it, this game would be awesome because you could actively see how people innovate around higher level, proper play rather than just watching 4 players do it at every national and jerking to them blindly.

*almost* everyone who plays this game is bad in my opinion. the degrees of badness simply vary.

Hate to break it to you, but even the best Melee players do not choose the best options in every situation, whether it be in neutral, defensively, or offensively. You still see all of the hype because there are high level decisions being made, and the "best" options aren't stagnant in a game like smash. Innovation and creativity with respect to high level play are why smash is hype, not because you can jerk it to a everyone chaingrabbing each other on FD.

 

[Mithost]

Ike's knockback was a tiny bit silly when combined with his Side B Shenanigans. Infinite wallkicks making any stage with a wall ledge (Yoshi Story, Dracula's Castle, Wario Ware, to name a few tournament popular stages), plus his really quick aerials were a little lame. The nerfs to his Side B were probably enough.

Lucario's only "overpowered" feature was the ability to side B mid-combo ON A SHIELD. You got punished for blocking a jab combo or a dash attack, which was also good against the other methods of preventing normal ground attacks. He didn't need any other nerfs (at least not this early in the metagame).

Both of these characters are still playable, but it still bothers me on how they were toned down far past the point where they were an issue. Lucario didn't need his dash attack and other attacks nerfed, and Ike didn't need his knockback toned down. If fox was one of the newly viable characters, his upsmash would have been nerfed to hell and back already. Not saying fox should be nerfed, I'm saying he would have been nerfed if he was in the same group as the new characters.

 

[metroid1117]

IMHO the silliest thing about 2.1 Ike was his reduced hitlag on-block, which made punishing shielded attacks extremely difficult.

 

[Mr.Pickle]

I get where you're coming from tachi, and I agree with what you're saying. Its a bit unfortunate that people in the public tend to be disappointing in their behavior.

I also agree with you doctor x, by no means should the public gain full control of this project, but I think the pmbr can benefit by putting more emphasis on engaging the public more. Not that they haven't done good so far, but it would be interesting if they questioned people more about this and other issues.

 

[JOE!]

If fox was one of the newly viable characters, his upsmash would have been nerfed to hell and back already. Not saying fox should be nerfed, I'm saying he would have been nerfed if he was in the same group as the new characters.

"Fox would have been nerfed"

"Not saying Fox should be nerfed"

what exactly are you saying here? Fox has traits that would be nerfed, but has immunity because melee?

 

[Juushichi]

I'm saying that Falco and Fox should be PALs, is all.

 

[Vashimus]

No one, and i mean no one deserves to stay #1 at all. If Fox does lose his #1 spot, he wont be buffed back into it. :V ... We focus more on design than balancing. We're not going to intentionally make a character better than Fox, but if a character ends up being better than Fox, while having a solid design and isn't silly like spacies, then they're not going to get nerfed just because they're better than Fox.

So basically from what I'm seeing (and correct me if I'm wrong backroomers), we know the PMBR thinks the spacies are pretty much the epitome of stupid design, however, they are never to be touched. There's no debate here, it's non-negotiatable.

In regards to other characters being nerfed when they approach "Fox status", it isn't out of wanting to keep Fox better than the rest of the cast. It's because that character is bordering towards the broken design that Fox witholds. They don't want to intentionally make a character as ridiculous as Fox, if not more. So Lucario, Ike, and Sonic were silly in the PMBR's eyes, so they wanted to fix it. If the character has solid design and is better than Fox, while not being ridiculous, they will not be nerfed. Of course, we have yet to see this happen, maybe it'll never happen. I don't think it will, since how can you make a character better than a ridiculous one without making them ridiculous themselves?

 

[SpiderMad]

Easy, you pretend they aren't and make funny lies up to disguise it. #Gimpyfish

 

[Doctor X]

So basically from what I'm seeing (and correct me if I'm wrong backroomers), we know the PMBR thinks the spacies are pretty much the epitome of stupid design, however, they are never to be touched. There's no debate here, it's non-negotiatable.

I can't imagine any reasonable person thinking something is "the epitome of stupid design" and not only leaving it in the game, but taking great pains to put it into a game where it doesn't already exist.

I'd love to actually see how this conversation might have gone.

Guy 1: Holy crap Fox is stupid. His existence ruins the whole game.
Guy 2: You're right, Guy 1. Fox is like the epitome of stupid design. The game would be much better without characters like Fox.
Guy 1: Right. Well now that's settled, let's put Fox back in as an exact replica.
Guy 2: Sounds good! This might take weeks, if not months of work, though.
Guy 1: No problem. Totally worth it.

Truth be told Fox is back because people liked Melee Fox, for reasons myself and others have already explained.. >.>

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Well, we -are- pandering to Melee enthusiasts, after all.

 

[JOE!]

The project also started as an experiment to make melee falco iirc, so making fox would be natural. It's really only now that characters can approach their level / we have seen the first "nerfs" that we begin to seriously look at them beyond "quit whining, they're fine" mentality that understandably develops after 12 years of not being able to do anything about them.

 

[Doctor X]

Well, we -are- pandering to Melee enthusiasts, after all.

Melee enthusiasts who like Fox, right?

Point is, somebody-- that is, a lot of people-- don't view him as the epitome of stupid design. In fact, a lot of people like him quite a bit. I have a hard time believing that the entire PMBR hates the character. >.>

I mean, if it really was a matter of "melee can't be touched" then why change Sheik's chaingrab? Unless that was unintentional?

 

[TheReflexWonder]

Melee enthusiasts who like Fox, right?

Point is, somebody-- that is, a lot of people-- don't view him as the epitome of stupid design. In fact, a lot of people like him quite a bit. I have a hard time believing that the entire PMBR hates the character. >.>

I mean, if it really was a matter of "melee can't be touched" then why change Sheik's chaingrab? Unless that was unintentional?

Yeah. I was agreeing with your idea.

As far as Sheik's chaingrab is concerned, it was wholly degenerative to gameplay and was not really "fun" for anyone. Few people disagree with the concept.

 

[GaretHax]

Well, we -are- pandering to Melee enthusiasts, after all.

Lets not forget that Brawl didn't exactly provide a great example for space animal design either lol. Also good riddence to NTS-Free D-throw, though I have a harder time taking convenient, mid-match bathroom breaks while playing half the cast vs. shiek =/

 

[TheReflexWonder]

That's kind of arguable. All three had interesting, unique concepts in character design, despite various quirks screwing things up. I certainly enjoy Brawl Fox over PM Fox, for instance. Same with Wolf.

 

[Doctor X]

Gotta remember guys, some people like Brawl. We should be happy they're willing to participate-- quite meaningfully in Reflex's case-- in a game that originally began on the idea of "Brawl sucks, let's fix it." It's a level of civility that the Melee community quite honestly doesn't deserve. >.<

 

[TheReflexWonder]

It's also worth noting that there can be good elements overshadowed by what may be an overall bad game. I think the designs of the space animals, chaingrabs aside, were certainly high points.