People are worried about Project M dying, what do you think?

[Ultim8]

He is a Sonic clone, but him and sonic are like Falcon to 3.5 Ganon.

Wow, he looks pretty cool. But is the 4.0 version a brawl mod? Or will it be a sm4sh mod?

 

[Ultim8]

He is a Sonic clone, but him and sonic are like Falcon to 3.5 Ganon.

Wow, he looks pretty cool. But is the 4.0 version a brawl mod? Or will it be a sm4sh mod?

 

[Foo]

brawl. We've been over this many many times. There will never be a pm for sm4sh.

 

[Gidy]

Wow, he looks pretty cool. But is the 4.0 version a brawl mod? Or will it be a sm4sh mod?

Project M will always be a Brawl mod lol.

 

[Gidy]

I'm out of the loop a little but I keep hearing people say things along the lines of "people don't like 3.5"

What's wrong with 3.5? Is this just a bunch of Lucas mains complaining or is there more to it than that?

I just hate how they nerfed a lot of characters recovery. They don't have to be exactly like Melee. Having a better recovery makes matches last longer and successful edge guards hype.

Also, nerfs to characters are never liked unless they are ridiculously strong and win MUs easily, like sonic back in version 2. Imo, Lucas didn't fall under that category.

 

[Foo]

I just hate how they nerfed a lot of characters recovery. They don't have to be exactly like Melee. Having a better recovery makes matches last longer and successful edge guards hype.

Also, nerfs to characters are never liked unless they are ridiculously strong and win MUs easily, like sonic back in version 2. Imo, Lucas didn't fall under that category.

I don't really think character's recoveries were nerfed to melee levels. There are tons of characters with better recovery than melee high tiers. Even some of the melee high tiers like marth and falcon have slightly buffed recovery. I think recoveries last patch were definitely way too good overall. They overdid it with a few characters, namely ivy, but it's better this patch. I think we ideally want to be in a place between melee and 3.02, and 3.5 seems to be a happy medium of recoveries. The edguarding player has significantly enhanced kill potential and one hit when they are offstage generally leads to a gimp, but there's usually not a point where one character is spending 30 seconds trying to get back to stage just on a hope that the enemy messes up the free edgeguard.

 

[GP&B]

Recoveries are definitely not Melee bad. The problem in 3.02 was that edgeguarding wasn't even ideal against a fair chunk of characters and Deep Kong became a thing because of how stupid it was.

 

[Nyhte]

I don't think adding characters would help much with longevity towards the game- casuals are probably far more likely to just join in on smash 4 instead of going through the hassle of setting up project m. Though that's me, I don't think there's much that can be done to promote project m outside of more support from the fans- more tournaments would help.

 

[Foo]

I don't think adding characters would help much with longevity towards the game- casuals are probably far more likely to just join in on smash 4 instead of going through the hassle of setting up project m. Though that's me, I don't think there's much that can be done to promote project m outside of more support from the fans- more tournaments would help.

Hype and attention from new characters certainly certainly can't hurt. While I doubt it will directly help longevity, I'd imagine a temporary increase in playerbase and attention, coupled with additional reasons to play PM over other smashes could help the scene grow.

 

[Gidy]

I don't really think character's recoveries were nerfed to melee levels. There are tons of characters with better recovery than melee high tiers. Even some of the melee high tiers like marth and falcon have slightly buffed recovery. I think recoveries last patch were definitely way too good overall. They overdid it with a few characters, namely ivy, but it's better this patch. I think we ideally want to be in a place between melee and 3.02, and 3.5 seems to be a happy medium of recoveries. The edguarding player has significantly enhanced kill potential and one hit when they are offstage generally leads to a gimp, but there's usually not a point where one character is spending 30 seconds trying to get back to stage just on a hope that the enemy messes up the free edgeguard.

I guess it could be considered the happy medium between the two games. Still don't like what they did to Lucas and Mario's recovery, but I can see where you're coming from.

Also, I think people would just generally like it more if PMDT stopped nerfing characters who don't need to be nerfed. Let it sink in the water for awhile for people to learn MUs better. It's like they keep restarting the Meta. Look at Smash 4. People are learning the Diddy MU fairly well despite no patches even though people want one.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Last patch's recoveries were way too ridiculous.

Having a good recovery should be a part of someone's pros outweighed by cons, so many characters got good recoveries tacked on so it led to development making a bunch even more ridiculous.

Outside of Metaknight in Brawl, I don't think anyone in any of the smash series had the raw power some characters had to recover in PM. Literally some characters were borderline impossible to edgeguard with most of the cast.

 

[metaXzero]

Also, I think people would just generally like it more if PMDT stopped nerfing characters who don't need to be nerfed. Let it sink in the water for awhile for people to learn MUs better. It's like they keep restarting the Meta. Look at Smash 4. People are learning the Diddy MU fairly well despite no patches even though people want one.

3.0 was released in December of 2013. 3.5 was released last November. So that's almost a year of sinking in the water and dealing with crazy recoveries put on already strong characters. Smash 4 Wii U has only been out since November. It's not really an appropriate comparison.

Yeah, some nerfs were a bit much in 3.5, but that wasn't really a balance patch. It was moreso a design overhaul so future balance patches aren't crazy like the world up to 3.0 where we got unspeakable horrors like 2.6 Ivy and Sonic.

 

[Terotrous]

I dunno who you're speaking for but reception for 3.5 has been overwhelmingly positive among dedicated PM players.

It's easy to say that when you define anyone who didn't like 3.5 as "not a dedicated PM player", as people seem to be doing in this thread.

In my defense, I said that everyone who didn't like the 3.5 changes are hypocrites because everyone agreed the power creep got too high but a lot of people didn't wanted their mains nerfed, just everybody else.

I think there was a pretty universal consensus that Lucas and M2 were too strong, the problem is they nerfed almost everyone, not just those two, turning 3.5 into a pretty drastically different game when people were mostly happy with 3.02 outside of a few specific issues. Force people to relearn the entire game while at the same time not adding any compelling new content and of course you're going to lose people, especially when a new Smash game is just around the corner.

 

[metaXzero]

I think there was a pretty universal consensus that Lucas and M2 were too strong, the problem is they nerfed almost everyone, not just those two, turning 3.5 into a pretty drastically different game when people were mostly happy with 3.02 outside of a few specific issues. Force people to relearn the entire game while at the same time not adding any compelling new content and of course you're going to lose people, especially when a new Smash game is just around the corner.

Wasn't there also a near universal consensus that recoveries were a bit too good though. Project Recovery did catch on as a name after all.

Those nerfs aside, I think the other nerfs were the PMDT thinking that certain characters had the potential to become new 3.02 Lucas and Mewtwos if simply dropped into the 3.5 world unchanged. I'm certain not all changes were so clear with their intent though.

3.5 itself didn't cause a major decline though. Fact is Smash 4 for Wii U was almost here No matter what the PMDT did, PM was going to take a hit from the newest game. Melee took a hit from Brawl too after all. Strife's Apex shenanigans don't help matters though.

 

[Terotrous]

Wasn't there also a near universal consensus that recoveries were a bit too good though. Project Recovery did catch on as a name after all.

Honestly I don't think it was ever "universal', it was more like a vocal minority of melee purists who didn't like the fact that being thrown off the ledge was no longer guaranteed death. Other than that, most people were just complaining about a few specific recoveries being overly good, most notably Mewtwo and Lucas. Some kind of nerf to Teleport and a bit more vulnerability on the forced tether ledgehop would probably have been enough.

3.5 itself didn't cause a major decline though. Fact is Smash 4 for Wii U was almost here No matter what the PMDT did, PM was going to take a hit from the newest game.

There's no question that Smash4 was part of the problem, a fair number of PM players were basically playing PM to tide them over until the next Smash game, but I've spoken to a number of players in the Smash 4 community who used to play PM and there seems to be a pretty strong consensus that PM 3.5 took out most of what made PM fun and they completely lost interest in the game when the patch came out. While it's possible that some of them would have gradually lost interest in PM anyway I think the patch caused people to drop the game a lot faster. Pretty much everyone's first experience playing PM 3.5 seems to basically have been this:
"Cool, a new patch is out, let's see what fun new stuff my character got. Oh, there's nothing new, and none of my combos or setups work anymore. Well, back to Smash4".


Ultimately, I feel like PM 3.02 was its own thing, it wasn't quite Melee, it wasn't quite Brawl / Smash4, it was a kind of interesting middle ground that had its own niche. With 3.5 though, it's become clear that it's just trying to be Melee. In general, I feel like this is a bad approach. Not only does it alienate all the players of the more modern smash games, but most of the Melee players are probably always going to prefer Melee anyway, and the closer its gameplay gets to Melee the less unique content it offers to make it worth playing both games.

 

[Kati]

3.5 is awesome. Definitely having better tournament sets now. We just have to weather the storm that is Nintendo pushing their money maker on the market until well, it stops making them money in which they will promptly stop caring about competitive smash.

 

[MegaMissingno]

3.5 was a design patch, not a balance patch.

 

[Terotrous]

3.5 was a design patch, not a balance patch.

Yes, exactly. They went back to the drawing board and changed the fundamental nature of the game, so obviously that upset people who liked the game the way it was. It's a classic case of "don't fix what isn't broken".

 

[StarshipGroove]

There's no question that Smash4 was part of the problem, a fair number of PM players were basically playing PM to tide them over until the next Smash game, but I've spoken to a number of players in the Smash 4 community who used to play PM and there seems to be a pretty strong consensus that PM 3.5 took out most of what made PM fun and they completely lost interest in the game when the patch came out. While it's possible that some of them would have gradually lost interest in PM anyway I think the patch caused people to drop the game a lot faster. Pretty much everyone's first experience playing PM 3.5 seems to basically have been this:
"Cool, a new patch is out, let's see what fun new stuff my character got. Oh, there's nothing new, and none of my combos or setups work anymore. Well, back to Smash4".
Ultimately, I feel like PM 3.02 was its own thing, it wasn't quite Melee, it wasn't quite Brawl / Smash4, it was a kind of interesting middle ground that had its own niche. With 3.5 though, it's become clear that it's just trying to be Melee. In general, I feel like this is a bad approach. Not only does it alienate all the players of the more modern smash games, but most of the Melee players are probably always going to prefer Melee anyway, and the closer its gameplay gets to Melee the less unique content it offers to make it worth playing both games.

You hit the nail on the head
m2k said it well at Paragon, 3.02 had its own flavor, PM 3.5 is getting close to being a Melee clone

 

[Narpas_sword]

Wow, he looks pretty cool. But is the 4.0 version a brawl mod? Or will it be a sm4sh mod?

How does one even make this jump?

 

[N0PE]

I just hate how they nerfed a lot of characters recovery. They don't have to be exactly like Melee. Having a better recovery makes matches last longer and successful edge guards hype.

Also, nerfs to characters are never liked unless they are ridiculously strong and win MUs easily, like sonic back in version 2. Imo, Lucas didn't fall under that category.

Fair enough.

Only reason I pointed out Lucas was because his recovery game was near-unpunishable (at my skill level) so I don't see as much of a problem with the recovery nerfs.

I see what you mean that it doesn't have to be exactly like melee, but just as a snarky comment it IS called PROJECT MELEE for a reason

 

[metaXzero]

Honestly I don't think it was ever "universal', it was more like a vocal minority of melee purists who didn't like the fact that being thrown off the ledge was no longer guaranteed death. Other than that, most people were just complaining about a few specific recoveries being overly good, most notably Mewtwo and Lucas. Some kind of nerf to Teleport and a bit more vulnerability on the forced tether ledgehop would probably have been enough.

But how do you tell the people complaining about Mewtwo and Lucas are so much less numerous than the people complaining about alot of recoveries (especially tethers) being near impossible to edgeguard while still having on-stage options that make Melee top tiers blush?

There's no question that Smash4 was part of the problem, a fair number of PM players were basically playing PM to tide them over until the next Smash game, but I've spoken to a number of players in the Smash 4 community who used to play PM and there seems to be a pretty strong consensus that PM 3.5 took out most of what made PM fun and they completely lost interest in the game when the patch came out. While it's possible that some of them would have gradually lost interest in PM anyway I think the patch caused people to drop the game a lot faster. Pretty much everyone's first experience playing PM 3.5 seems to basically have been this:
"Cool, a new patch is out, let's see what fun new stuff my character got. Oh, there's nothing new, and none of my combos or setups work anymore. Well, back to Smash4".

Part? Smash 4 was the MAIN "problem". It's a new game in the series. Just like with Melee to Brawl, most people are going to look at the new game and dedicate time to exploring and dissecting it. Some will hope to make names for themselves with this new game. And the game was obviously going to be big at least for a few years. Since PM pretty much phased Brawl out competitively and arguably absorbed alot of its scene, it was obviously going to suffer on Smash 4's release. It isn't suffering anywhere near as much as Melee did though.

And unless what was "fun" to those players was how silly tethers were and some recoveries like Pit were, Dash-canceling ZSS shots, or Mewtwo and Lucas in general, not much was trimmed

Ultimately, I feel like PM 3.02 was its own thing, it wasn't quite Melee, it wasn't quite Brawl / Smash4, it was a kind of interesting middle ground that had its own niche. With 3.5 though, it's become clear that it's just trying to be Melee. In general, I feel like this is a bad approach. Not only does it alienate all the players of the more modern smash games, but most of the Melee players are probably always going to prefer Melee anyway, and the closer its gameplay gets to Melee the less unique content it offers to make it worth playing both games.

PM's intent from the very beginning was always to be close to Melee. Not a perfect Melee clone since we still have alot of Brawl techs, some 64 techs, and even new tech unique to only PM, but still to closest to Melee style gameplay over anything. The PMDT clearly felt that 3.02 deviated to far from that. Yeah, alot of folks liked it as is, but there were plenty that didn't. And ultimately, there are plenty that whether they agree with the 3.5 overhaul or not, will stick with the game because they overall enjoy it. Smash 4 wasn't "a part" of the decline. It was the main cause. Even with the Apex debacle and people angry about nerfs, Smash 4 is the main reason for the decline. 3.5 could've been near identical to 3.02 or never came at all and the decline would still be happening.

But PM is still in a better place than Melee was Post-Brawl.

Yes, exactly. They went back to the drawing board and changed the fundamental nature of the game, so obviously that upset people who liked the game the way it was. It's a classic case of "don't fix what isn't broken".

It ultimately just comes down to opinion if it was broken or not. PMDT ultimately saw it as is and there are plenty who understand that just as there are plenty who disagree.

 

[MLGF]

PM is in a better spot then Melee from scene support, but Melee players seemed to take more initiative and didn't have a company trying to snuff them out from the inside.

That **** hurts.

Now then, on the topic of PM just being Melee and it's just a Melee clone that kicked out Brawl players... that's BS. I've seen a **** ton of diversity at tournaments recently, and yeah there is a bit more Melee in there now, but it's still varied and diverse. Oh noes, Paragon has two of the best Melee players in the world playing in grands it's horrible. Let's just ignore that so many tournaments that have had plenty of variety. Let's ignore how Beast had Professor Pro beat 2 Melee Gods with his Snake, Flux had freaking Ally, Pro, and Poob in top four, with only one Melee character in there. Let's shake off Sethlon and Lunchables being the top players in their region without using a single Melee character. Let's ignore DJNinty using Ike and just winning consistently. Let's ignore Mass... no seriously, ignore Mass. Marth's... Marth's everywhere (I blame it on how Mass has a meta that revolves around recovering horrible)

 

[Fortress]

Why do we even care who uses a Melee character? Project M being Project M shouldn't make it unbearable to see Melee characters in there. I mean, I love Marth, and use him all of the time.

 

[dy831532sssfjhhggb2224523]

So this leak came out of the whole Alex Strife ****storm on Reddit. Apparently he wants everyone involved with streaming Apex, CT and VGBC, to completely purge their channels of everything PM related, past and future. Chibo said he's not agreeing to this but I don't know about GIMR. Is this why VGBC hasn't touched PM in quite a long time now, and won't even host the channel that's now doing Xanadu?

I'm so glad Alex Strife ****ed up as hard as he did because nobody's going to listen to him trying to kill PM now.

I may host a Revival of Project M at some point in March/April/May with Singles, Doubles, a Novice Bracket, and All Star Versus at the same event. Colorado loves Project M, and hopefully I see dedicated fans from nearby states.

 

[Banjodorf]

I'm so glad Alex Strife ****ed up as hard as he did because nobody's going to listen to him trying to kill PM now.

I may host a Revival of Project M at some point in March/April/May with Singles, Doubles, a Novice Bracket, and All Star Versus at the same event. Colorado loves Project M, and hopefully I see dedicated fans from nearby states.

So good to hear. Keep the PM community strong!

Anyway!

Still think we'll get a fair number of people back for 4.0; if there's new characters, there's obviously going to be a rush to "be the best" at "insert new character here".

And it's a bit of casual hype as well, because they'd be characters that aren't in Smash 4; it's not everything, but it couldn't hurt.

My friends still vastly prefer it as a competitive game, as something with a faster Melee feel, and the Brawl and then some cast. It's like perfect. So it's got longevity with me. Honestly I'm not very familiar with the Georgia scene, but I've met a few people I didn't expect in the Atlanta area who are PM fans. So that's something.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Why do we even care who uses a Melee character? Project M being Project M shouldn't make it unbearable to see Melee characters in there. I mean, I love Marth, and use him all of the time.

I only take issue when there is balance bias, aka Fox and Falco will never be lower than high tier.

 

[GabPR]

Lets face it, although there may be a point that no character is lower than mid tier, there will always be a character at least slightly better than the rest. Considering the game will never be perfect. It all comes down to who do you think DESERVES to be top tier. Forget about perfect 50/50 matchups in all the cast, cause that aint never gonna happen in a game this complex.

 

[Terotrous]

But how do you tell the people complaining about Mewtwo and Lucas are so much less numerous than the people complaining about alot of recoveries (especially tethers) being near impossible to edgeguard while still having on-stage options that make Melee top tiers blush?

I think you mean "more numerous", since I was claiming that the complaints about Mewtwo and Lucas were more prevalent than the complaints about edgeguarding. And the way you could tell was just being around the PM community, participating in conversations and listening to commentators. Everyone acknowledged that those two were a problem (including the recovery people, as Mewtwo and Lucas had among the best and safest recoveries in the game, that's part of why they were so good), whereas the complaints about recoveries were mostly from a handful of staunch Melee supporters.

And unless what was "fun" to those players was how silly tethers were and some recoveries like Pit were, Dash-canceling ZSS shots, or Mewtwo and Lucas in general, not much was trimmed

A ton was trimmed, much of which has nothing to do with recovery. For example, I played Ivysaur. For whatever reason, Razor Leaf was severely nerfed in 3.5, significantly weakening the reward she can get from it, even though it was never really demonstrated that Ivysaur was unbalanced (Denti had a few decent showings with her but nothing especially dominant). Most of the rest of the cast also lost combos or pressure setups (though of course not the Melee top tiers, who remain largely untouched). Those were definitely part of the things I considered "fun" about the game.

PM's intent from the very beginning was always to be close to Melee. Not a perfect Melee clone since we still have alot of Brawl techs, some 64 techs, and even new tech unique to only PM, but still to closest to Melee style gameplay over anything. The PMDT clearly felt that 3.02 deviated to far from that. Yeah, alot of folks liked it as is, but there were plenty that didn't.

That's possible, but one of the most important things to realize when designing a competitive game is that the metagame will diverge from your original intent, and attempting to force it back to what you envisioned usually alienates your fanbase. Take a look at Marvel vs Capcom 2, for example. It was never intended to be a broken mess of infinites, relauches, assist lockdown, and other nonsense (in fact, many of the game mechanics attempt to specifically prevent these situations from being possible), but that's what it became, and it's actually what the audience likes about it. If Capcom patched all of that stuff out as it was found the game would have been forgotten. A much more recent example is Playstation All-Stars. Every time any useful piece of tech was found for any character except Kratos or Raiden, they immediately patched it out, because they didn't want the other characters to be able to have that kind of playstyle. Eventually they removed basically all of the kill confirm combos from the game, drastically changing the metagame and causing almost all players to quit. If they had just left the game mostly alone while toning down the most powerful characters, it might have been fairly successful. 1.00 was actually a lot of fun.

Smash 4 wasn't "a part" of the decline. It was the main cause.

It's pretty clear that both factors contributed, releasing such a massive design change at the same time as a new Smash game was coming out was suicide. If those changes had been made 8 months earlier, they might have been accepted, but really I wouldn't have released any more updates until new characters were ready. New characters always make major changes easier to swallow, because then at least if the patch ruined your main you can try out someone new.

 

[Rizner]

It's also worth noting that many characters were changed in a way which requires a new play style to be as effective as before. When a major facet of a character is changed, it's very jarring to those players. People like Zelda, zss, sonic, and others just play very differently now. They might not be bad, they might be balanced, but it was possible imo to get that balance without core kit changes which were implemented.

 

[#HBC | Red Ryu]

Funny a lot of things people loved about MvC2 was what I hated about it the most.

MvC3 was cool, then my copy became worthless when a new version came out within a few months as a cash grab so I just quit trying with that game.

But more on topic.

I think the latest patch was a giant tone down, but it needed to be done. This definitely shows a more League vs DOTA style of game philosophy in terms of design the more I read this thread.

Both games tone down or buff people that need it, but then go about different aspects to approach it. The issue I had, and it's what DOTA loves, is power-creeping a lot while trying to keep all the power as high as possible. There are issues to this though, soon the cast becomes more homogeneous, this was definitely happening in PM's 3.0, where it's a power speed chase to become better and stronger than before. It became a point where Ganon, who is character about raw power but has trouble getting in, suddenly had nothing to offer that was better than others when Mario could KO literally 8%ish within anything with more speed, tools, pretty much most of anything to outclass him. This was far more apparent at the top where the tool those characters had were clearly numerous and fit so many situations while straight up just making a lot of people lower not even worth it.

League and Smash 4 took a different approach of, what are this characters strengths and weaknesses. What are they good at, what are they bad at? Where do they fit in and where are they ideal? Now balance still isn't perfect but it gets the idea of setting up clear traits to try and balance everyone out.

With PM, I don't see it like that and more like the DOTA approach. Which I am not a fan of. 3.5 offered more toning down in the right areas, but it still has issues and it shows when some characters are considered "untouchable."

That begs me to ask the question, is this trying to be a fast Melee like game? Or is it trying to be a clone. With the "untouchables" and gameplay in some areas remaining that are bad ideas, I'm leaning on the latter over the former, though not as much as before.

 

[GabPR]

It's also worth noting that many characters were changed in a way which requires a new play style to be as effective as before. When a major facet of a character is changed, it's very jarring to those players. People like Zelda, zss, sonic, and others just play very differently now. They might not be bad, they might be balanced, but it was possible imo to get that balance without core kit changes which were implemented.

Being a Sonic main I can say Sonic still plays the same. Only thing different is that you cant expect to spam specials as much as before and be succesful. He is still also a great character.

 

[Terotrous]

Funny a lot of things people loved about MvC2 was what I hated about it the most.

I actually agree, I much preferred MvsC1. Even though it was still full of infinites at least with assists being limited it was somewhat sane. However, when you look at the popularity of "mahvel" we're clearly in the minority.

Both games tone down or buff people that need it, but then go about different aspects to approach it. The issue I had, and it's what DOTA loves, is power-creeping a lot while trying to keep all the power as high as possible. There are issues to this though, soon the cast becomes more homogeneous, this was definitely happening in PM's 3.0, where it's a power speed chase to become better and stronger than before. It became a point where Ganon, who is character about raw power but has trouble getting in, suddenly had nothing to offer that was better than others when Mario could KO literally 8%ish within anything with more speed, tools, pretty much most of anything to outclass him. This was far more apparent at the top where the tool those characters had were clearly numerous and fit so many situations while straight up just making a lot of people lower not even worth it.

The thing is I feel like this is what people want to play. You brought up Mario, for example. Yes, he's super good in 3.02. However, while there are a couple people crying for Mario nerfs, the general reaction seemed more like "Yes! They finally made Mario into a good character!" A lot of people have been waiting 15 years for Mario to finally reach that level.

If you look at Melee, there's only a few character archetypes that are viable (either you've got to have great pokes or great mobility), and yet that game still remains popular because I think those are the types of characters that most people want to play. Sure, we could tone down Fox, Falco, Sheik, Marth, and Jiggs, so that everyone was viable, but would people enjoy the game as much? I really don't know. I feel like the extent of what those characters were capable of is what gave the game its longevity. In PM 3.02, almost every character is like that, which means you can pick up any character and have a blast. I think that's really something that people enjoyed about the game.

As for Ganondorf, I admit, my solution to the problem was just to buff him more. I think if you gave him the Wizard's Dropkick from Smash4, he'd be a lot more viable. He doesn't have enough of a power advantage compared to more mobile characters? Make him more powerful. Remove the ability to tech side B so that Side B -> DTilt -> Jab is a guaranteed combo and suddenly he's tons scarier.

Is this power creep? Probably. But as long as the cast remains appreciably different from each other (which, IMO, they do, due largely in part to Smash's highly dynamic neutral game) it probably hasn't gone too far yet.

 

[GP&B]

Mario was already good prior to 3.02. Most of the outcry came from the questionable buffs he got going into 3.0.

 

[N0PE]

Funny a lot of things people loved about MvC2 was what I hated about it the most.

MvC3 was cool, then my copy became worthless when a new version came out within a few months as a cash grab so I just quit trying with that game.

But more on topic.

I think the latest patch was a giant tone down, but it needed to be done. This definitely shows a more League vs DOTA style of game philosophy in terms of design the more I read this thread.

Both games tone down or buff people that need it, but then go about different aspects to approach it. The issue I had, and it's what DOTA loves, is power-creeping a lot while trying to keep all the power as high as possible. There are issues to this though, soon the cast becomes more homogeneous, this was definitely happening in PM's 3.0, where it's a power speed chase to become better and stronger than before. It became a point where Ganon, who is character about raw power but has trouble getting in, suddenly had nothing to offer that was better than others when Mario could KO literally 8%ish within anything with more speed, tools, pretty much most of anything to outclass him. This was far more apparent at the top where the tool those characters had were clearly numerous and fit so many situations while straight up just making a lot of people lower not even worth it.

League and Smash 4 took a different approach of, what are this characters strengths and weaknesses. What are they good at, what are they bad at? Where do they fit in and where are they ideal? Now balance still isn't perfect but it gets the idea of setting up clear traits to try and balance everyone out.

With PM, I don't see it like that and more like the DOTA approach. Which I am not a fan of. 3.5 offered more toning down in the right areas, but it still has issues and it shows when some characters are considered "untouchable."

That begs me to ask the question, is this trying to be a fast Melee like game? Or is it trying to be a clone. With the "untouchables" and gameplay in some areas remaining that are bad ideas, I'm leaning on the latter over the former, though not as much as before.

TOTALLY agree with the DotA comparison. I think the cast should be buffed/tweaked with respect to the characters who have been deemed to already have reliable tools (barring anything godly like version 2 Sonic, lol). DotA tends to nerf things that are good and leaves the untouchables as they are

 

[Terotrous]

Mario was already good prior to 3.02. Most of the outcry came from the questionable buffs he got going into 3.0.

Perhaps, though the point remains that for the most part, people are happy with characters being good, at least up to a certain point.

 

[GabPR]

Perhaps, though the point remains that for the most part, people are happy with characters being good, at least up to a certain point.

Define good imo most characters are pretty good in 3.5 besides the changes.

 

[Terotrous]

Define good imo most characters are pretty good in 3.5 besides the changes.

Yeah, "good" is probably a bad term since it's vague. "Powerful" would be more accurate, and "Powerful" is defined as "being able to hang with Melee's top tiers".

 

[metaXzero]

I think you mean "more numerous", since I was claiming that the complaints about Mewtwo and Lucas were more prevalent than the complaints about edgeguarding. And the way you could tell was just being around the PM community, participating in conversations and listening to commentators. Everyone acknowledged that those two were a problem (including the recovery people, as Mewtwo and Lucas had among the best and safest recoveries in the game, that's part of why they were so good), whereas the complaints about recoveries were mostly from a handful of staunch Melee supporters.

Yeah more numerous. But anyway.

It's easy to say that when you define anyone who didn't like 3.5 as "not a dedicated PM player", as people seem to be doing in this thread.

That was your response to Strong Bad saying 3.5 has had an overall positive reception among PM players. Aren't you basically doing the same thing though by saying the overall recovery complaints towards 3.02 were just a handful of Melee supporters (basically implying overall everyone was fine with general recoveries in 3.02)?

A ton was trimmed, much of which has nothing to do with recovery. For example, I played Ivysaur. For whatever reason, Razor Leaf was severely nerfed in 3.5, significantly weakening the reward she can get from it, even though it was never really demonstrated that Ivysaur was unbalanced (Denti had a few decent showings with her but nothing especially dominant). Most of the rest of the cast also lost combos or pressure setups (though of course not the Melee top tiers, who remain largely untouched). Those were definitely part of the things I considered "fun" about the game.

I'm pretty sure the rationale was that in the new 3.5 environment, some characters could easily become new Lucas' and Mewtwos if left unchanged. Some changes were probably more arbitrary than others though. As for the mostly unchanged Melee top tiers, PMDT has always been balancing around them and generally want Melee fans to be able to jump into their characters with little hitches. Spacies are popular now, but they are far from the only ones winning 3.5 tournaments.

That's possible, but one of the most important things to realize when designing a competitive game is that the metagame will diverge from your original intent, and attempting to force it back to what you envisioned usually alienates your fanbase. Take a look at Marvel vs Capcom 2, for example. It was never intended to be a broken mess of infinites, relauches, assist lockdown, and other nonsense (in fact, many of the game mechanics attempt to specifically prevent these situations from being possible), but that's what it became, and it's actually what the audience likes about it. If Capcom patched all of that stuff out as it was found the game would have been forgotten. A much more recent example is Playstation All-Stars. Every time any useful piece of tech was found for any character except Kratos or Raiden, they immediately patched it out, because they didn't want the other characters to be able to have that kind of playstyle. Eventually they removed basically all of the kill confirm combos from the game, drastically changing the metagame and causing almost all players to quit. If they had just left the game mostly alone while toning down the most powerful characters, it might have been fairly successful. 1.00 was actually a lot of fun.

No matter what is done, someone is going to be alienated. I'd say 3.5 really didn't alienate that many people though. As I said, Smash 4 did more damage and Apex forcing streams to not show PM didn't help.

It's pretty clear that both factors contributed, releasing such a massive design change at the same time as a new Smash game was coming out was suicide. If those changes had been made 8 months earlier, they might have been accepted, but really I wouldn't have released any more updates until new characters were ready. New characters always make major changes easier to swallow, because then at least if the patch ruined your main you can try out someone new.

The way you describe PM's health post 3.5, you'd think we were Melee post-Brawl. We really aren't. Even with Apex trying to kill us.

 

[Banjodorf]

Honestly, it'd be fine if they hadn't buffed Fox/Falco as much; just tone them down and we good.

Despite spacey buffs (Speaking of spacies, what happened to Wolf this patch?) 3.5 still feels like I can pick up a character and play them, without feeling really under-powered. It's not like the game is incredibly imbalanced now, hell, 3.0.2 was more imbalanced I think, but it definitely feels toned down, and different.

The way you describe PM's health post 3.5, you'd think we were Melee post-Brawl. We really aren't. Even with Apex trying to kill us.

And even with Brawl fever, Melee eventually made a comeback; and PM has the added strength of not having such horrible character balance, meaning more people will be attracted to it. Plus, PM isn't done updating yet. 3.5 just had a very unfortunate release timing.

So I'm not too worried.