PPMD's opinion on PM

[Searing_Sorrow]

I didn't say PPMD playing as somebody other than Falco. I said playing as Falco, and not using shines or lasers.

Give him time and he would probably have a video of it. Even without it, falco is mid tier in melee, and at least 80% of players are casual. He might even be able to pick Pichu and take a lot of people out. You seem to either overestimate the smash community's average skill lvl , or underestimate his ability to adapt. Hungry box and m2k was winning teams with ness and Pichu lol

 

[Bleck]

falco is mid tier in melee

I'm sorry, what.

 

[Searing_Sorrow]

Without shine and laser he is mid tier don't misquote me if you must troll

 

[Bleck]

Oh, sorry. I misread, I thought you were claiming that Falco was generally mid tier in Melee.

 

[Searing_Sorrow]

Oh, sorry. I misread, I thought you were claiming that Falco was generally mid tier in Melee.

Ah then I apologize for the blowup

 

[Phaiyte]

no

Hold on let me try this again:

Falco: dair > dair > dair > dair > dair > dair > dair (repeat until opponent is dead)

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

You forgot to alternate the dairs with lasers.

 

[Phaiyte]

You forgot to alternate the dairs with lasers.

I'm aware that you can use the lasers to "jab reset" if the opponent is too far away, but still. It's basically the same.

 

[Phaiyte]

I think there is a need to recognize the different between something that is OP and something that is stupid. OP moves / characters are those which clearly have a distinct and strong advantage over the rest of the cast irrespective of the skill cap. Sonic was a good example of this, a fast character with an easily spamable move base which wasn't simply annoying but won tournaments consistently and dramatically. OP characters / moves I think should be nerfed, but there needs to be a very objective examination before any of this is done.

Stupid moves are totally different. Take Mario's fireballs. Mario is high tier, he's super good, but no one has showed extreme dominance with him in a game breaking fashion yet. However it is ridiculously easy to sit there and camp with fireballs. A simple strategy that requires very little skill is super effective, albeit not impossible to counter. The risk reward calculation is ridiculously biased. What made melee great is that almost every move had a time and place, but also a wrong time and place. While some things definitely were more balanced than others, as a whole melee required an extremely high level of decision making from the player in order to compete. Spamming for almost any characters is easy to punish (*cough* falco). This isn't as true for a lot of PM characters and matchups.

So while I think it is necessary to get rid of OP things to ensure a fair game, I think it's also a good idea to get rid of stupid things to ensure a fun game. Does this mean we NEED to nerf fireballs, arrows, bananas, and recoveries? No, not really. Just because Armada wins with Pit or Emukiller with Mewtwo doesn't mean that the characters are necessarily broken as we've also seen these characters lose. However often times I find myself watching PM and say to myself, "wow, that's just stupid," because frankly a lot of things are.

PM would be better if these "stupid" techniques/moves/characters were revised to require more complexity and skill with a balanced risk reward ratio.

Don't get me wrong, but, I'm pretty sure a lot of doc players spammed pills

 

[Mr.Pickle]

It isn't the same thing, the IASA on pm fireballs are at least 7 frames faster than pills, which btw applies to when you're just standing on the ground. Add the arc that's between mario's fireballs and doc's pills, and you get a much more spamable move that requires very little thought in its usage.

 

[DMG]

Doc pills aren't even in the same boat as PM Mario Fireballs. Like Pickle mentioned, they buffed cooldown/IASA frames on Fireballs so you get double and triple projectile out faster while being safer on each individual use. It's noticeable enough that many characters switch strategies from the usual "flying" aerials meant to overpower the projectile, into more defensive clanking on the ground or PS attempts.

 

[Mischief]

When my friends start fireballing me I essentially have to stop all approaches and just wait for them to do something else. I've yet to find a safe way around it from which I can approach without getting grabbed/naired/downb spinny thinged. Mario is still beatable but fireballs put neutral completely on hold.

It's even visible in a lot of tourney matches. Fireballs come out, neutral stops. That's not good gameplay no matter if mario is "op" or not (he's not).

 

[Mr.Random]

It isn't the same thing, the IASA on pm fireballs are at least 7 frames faster than pills, which btw applies to when you're just standing on the ground. Add the arc that's between mario's fireballs and doc's pills, and you get a much more spamable move that requires very little thought in its usage.

They're only spammable against bad players. Good players will punish you for spamming them. Tired of people complaining about Mario's projectile.

 

[Mr.Pickle]

You seem to have completely ignored what everyone has been talking about. It's a fact that mario's fireballs are faster, have a better arc, and do more damage, and with this combination, leads them to being more spammable. How much is of course depending on the level of play, but with that being said, they are still much more spammable than any form of pills or fireballs on any version of mario. Look at this way, if you were to agree that doc's pills were spammable in high level of play, wouldn't the fact that pm mario's fireballs are essentially a faster version of pills, lead you to believe that they're more spammable than pills?

 

[Mr.Random]

You seem to have completely ignored what everyone has been talking about. It's a fact that mario's fireballs are faster, have a better arc, and do more damage, and with this combination, leads them to being more spammable. How much is of course depending on the level of play, but with that being said, they are still much more spammable than any form of pills or fireballs on any version of mario. Look at this way, if you were to agree that doc's pills were spammable in high level of play, wouldn't the fact that pm mario's fireballs are essentially a faster version of pills, lead you to believe that they're more spammable than pills?

Mario's fireballs have the same stats as doc's but their IASA frames are 6-7 frames faster. There is enough lag in between to punish Mario. They also have starting lag too. Their getting nerfed anyways so you guys already won

 

[Mischief]

^ Can you please explain how to punish a player spamming them. Certainly this depends on your character. When I play fox they are less effective because I can usually keep pressure on Mario long enough that he CAN'T fireball, and I'm fast enough to make camping risky because I can usually get there very quickly. This is my strategy with my other two mains, Snake and Marth, to keep pressuring mario constantly, but this is more problematic for slower characters because Mario is quite fast himself and can easily turn around close ranged combat and punish you for a mistake.

Lets assume though that I can't pressure Mario forever (which makes sense if you are playing someone who is also good, if you make a mistake they will capitalize on it as well). We go to neutral and he starts fireball camping between platforms or something. I as a marth/snake players am presented with a wall of fireballs. Lets look at my options.

Snake: Very little. I can shield, but this is stupid. It gets me nowhere and eventually my shield will be drained. Perhaps I could roll out of it to try get in closer for an attack, but rolling into your opponent is an easy way to get punished even if I can avoid the wall of fireballs. I can perhaps jump over it, but oh wait, now I have a problem. I am underneath mario who has one of the best juggle games in PM. That's bad news. Guess I don't really have an approach option, guess I'll move away from the fireballs. Oh crap, I'm now getting pressured into the end of the stage and now mario has stage control.

Marth: The situation is definitely better than snakes, but still stupidly annoying. Usually I just opt to cut the fireballs out of the sky. This means I can maintain my stage position against Mario and not worry about taking damage. But the same problem remains, Mario is still in control of the neutral game. All the movement problems I outlined above still apply. Moving forward or back in any way opens me up to get hit by a fireball or go underneath mario where I can easily get combed. I can move forward bit by bit while cutting away the fireballs, but this isn't really an approach option, Mario still has more control over what is about to happen than I do.

Obviously if someone sits there and spams forever there are avenues around it. But there is such a thing as "intelligent spamming." Mario can reasonably slow down a match by firing off 3 or 4 fireballs, regain good stage positioning, and then continue on from there. They also aid in his approach. Ontop of this they present a reasonably good edge guard against a lot of characters. Again, this is not to say Mario is OP, he is very beatable, but the strategy is "just press b" covers so many options and is so ridiculously easy to do that I can't call it anything other than stupid.

 

[Mr.Random]

^ Can you please explain how to punish a player spamming them. Certainly this depends on your character. When I play fox they are less effective because I can usually keep pressure on Mario long enough that he CAN'T fireball, and I'm fast enough to make camping risky because I can usually get there very quickly. This is my strategy with my other to mains, Snake and Marth, to keep pressuring mario constantly, but this is more problematic for slower characters because Mario is quite fast himself and can easily turn around close ranged combat and punish you for a mistake.

Lets assume though that I can't pressure Mario forever (which makes sense if you are playing someone who is also good, if you make a mistake they will capitalize on it as well). We go to neutral and he starts fireball camping between platforms or something. I as a marth/snake players am presented with a wall of fireballs. Lets look at my options.

Snake: Very little. I can shield, but this is stupid. It gets me nowhere and eventually my shield will be drained. Perhaps I could roll out of it to try get in closer for an attack, but rolling into your opponent is an easy way to get punished even if I can avoid the wall of fireballs. I can perhaps jump over it, but oh wait, now I have a problem. I am underneath mario who has one of the best juggle games in PM. That's bad news. Guess I don't really have an approach option, guess I'll move away from the fireballs. Oh crap, I'm now getting pressured into the end of the stage and now mario has stage control.

Marth: The situation is definitely better than snakes, but still stupidly annoying. Usually I just opt to cut the fireballs out of the sky. This means I can maintain my stage position against Mario and not worry about taking damage. But the same problem remains, Mario is still in control of the neutral game. All the movement problems I outlined above still apply. Moving forward or back in any way opens me up to get hit by a fireball or go underneath mario where I can easily get combed. I can move forward bit by bit while cutting away the fireballs, but this isn't really an approach option, Mario still has more control over what is about to happen than I do.

Obviously if someone sits there and spams forever there are avenues around it. But there is such a thing as "intelligent spamming." Mario can reasonably slow down a match by firing off 3 or 4 fireballs, regain good stage positioning, and then continue on from there. They also aid in his approach. Ontop of this they present a reasonably good edge guard against a lot of characters. Again, this is not to say Mario is OP, he is very beatable, but the strategy is "just press b" covers so many options and is so ridiculously easy to do that I can't call it anything other than stupid.

No need to write the essay. They are getting nerfed either way like I said.

 

[Mr.Pickle]

Then why did you argue about it in the first place? I don't understand what you hoped to accomplish.

 

[Mr.Random]

Then why did you argue about it in the first place? I don't understand what you hoped to accomplish.

Nah I just realized it. But anyways back on topic. It seems people are mixed about PPMD's opinions.

 

[Mr.Pickle]

Nah I just realized it. But anyways back on topic. It seems people are mixed about PPMD's opinions.

It would seem so, though a larger majority of people tend to agree with his stance on recoveries. His stance on spammable moves though, seems to be split down the middle.

 

[mimgrim]

Snake: Very little. I can shield, but this is stupid. It gets me nowhere and eventually my shield will be drained. Perhaps I could roll out of it to try get in closer for an attack, but rolling into your opponent is an easy way to get punished even if I can avoid the wall of fireballs. I can perhaps jump over it, but oh wait, now I have a problem. I am underneath mario who has one of the best juggle games in PM. That's bad news. Guess I don't really have an approach option, guess I'll move away from the fireballs. Oh crap, I'm now getting pressured into the end of the stage and now mario has stage control.

You have your own projectile as Snake. Use them. A well placed Grenade would force the Mario to get away from it and give you a chance to close in.

 

[Bleck]

His stance on spammable moves though, seems to be split down the middle.

It's because the concept of 'spam' is sort of nebulous in a videogame context; of course people are going to have different opinions of a thing if they're not even in agreement on what it is.

 

[NegroCaucasian]

Preach Vigilante! PREACH!!!!

This is actually true. There are some characters like I said that are perfectly balanced in PM. Roy has amazing onstage game but also has a mediocre recovery. Then you have a character like Mario with both amazing on stage game and godlike recovery, dumb.
Edit: And Fireballs lol. MVD got into top 32 in CEO just by spamming these. He said it himself.

Fox
Falco
Marth
Sheik
Falcon

>top characters in Melee
>mediocre recoveries

these are the characters you see most being played, so when people say Melee is more exciting to watch than PM, i believe this is why.

you get to watch these characters with great onstage presence combo each other and when sent off stage, they have to truly fight their way back on (with mediocre recoveries that are very susceptible to being edgeguarded) So there never really is any downtime when it comes to action.

Where as being offstage in PM almost feels like taking a breather. The sense of risk and urgency is not always there, which shouldn't be the case when offstage in a platform fighter.

great points but i feel that sheik and marth have average recoveries at worst, both are pretty easy to sweet spot the ledge with and cover good distance. (they are still susceptible to offstage edge guarding, onstage edgeguarding and edge hogging making there recovery's perfect in my mind.)

 

[Mischief]

You have your own projectile as Snake. Use them. A well placed Grenade would force the Mario to get away from it and give you a chance to close in.

This can work but it is situational. Grenades take a lot more time to draw and throw than fireballs. If you're too close to Mario while drawing one you'll likely get hit by a fireball and often the Grenade will clank with the pills. Jumping than then throwing can work, but if the Mario is smart he can bait a Grenade draw with pills and then attack you after you've committed to the option. Grenade is still a great tool but pills > nades

 

[DMG]

They're only spammable against bad players. Good players will punish you for spamming them. Tired of people complaining about Mario's projectile.

You can punish a person for "spamming" them, as in they hold to specific patterns. Most really safe moves can fail when used repeatedly too much, usually back to back. The move is not as punishable if you stick to 1-2 at a time and keep your options flexible: that's the main draw of many safe moves to begin with. It's usually the flexibility in movement once the move is out/done

The way to punish them generally involves deliberately encroaching on Mario's space, with very specific timing and spacing concerns based on his momentum and habits with the move. You pay attention to whether he will touch the ground while shooting this fireball (usually applies to the second one they shoot in a single jump), how he's drifting with it, etc. If your character is a good combination of fast + clanking range, you can afford to pressure him more aggressively, but that doesn't apply to many chars.

 

[DrinkingFood]

I like when Marios spam fireballs against my ROB because they are just adding onto the damage I can deal with my tackle reflector lol

 

[TheKmanOfSmash]

^ Can you please explain how to punish a player spamming them. Certainly this depends on your character. When I play fox they are less effective because I can usually keep pressure on Mario long enough that he CAN'T fireball, and I'm fast enough to make camping risky because I can usually get there very quickly. This is my strategy with my other two mains, Snake and Marth, to keep pressuring mario constantly, but this is more problematic for slower characters because Mario is quite fast himself and can easily turn around close ranged combat and punish you for a mistake.

Lets assume though that I can't pressure Mario forever (which makes sense if you are playing someone who is also good, if you make a mistake they will capitalize on it as well). We go to neutral and he starts fireball camping between platforms or something. I as a marth/snake players am presented with a wall of fireballs. Lets look at my options.

Snake: Very little. I can shield, but this is stupid. It gets me nowhere and eventually my shield will be drained. Perhaps I could roll out of it to try get in closer for an attack, but rolling into your opponent is an easy way to get punished even if I can avoid the wall of fireballs. I can perhaps jump over it, but oh wait, now I have a problem. I am underneath mario who has one of the best juggle games in PM. That's bad news. Guess I don't really have an approach option, guess I'll move away from the fireballs. Oh crap, I'm now getting pressured into the end of the stage and now mario has stage control.

Marth: The situation is definitely better than snakes, but still stupidly annoying. Usually I just opt to cut the fireballs out of the sky. This means I can maintain my stage position against Mario and not worry about taking damage. But the same problem remains, Mario is still in control of the neutral game. All the movement problems I outlined above still apply. Moving forward or back in any way opens me up to get hit by a fireball or go underneath mario where I can easily get combed. I can move forward bit by bit while cutting away the fireballs, but this isn't really an approach option, Mario still has more control over what is about to happen than I do.

Obviously if someone sits there and spams forever there are avenues around it. But there is such a thing as "intelligent spamming." Mario can reasonably slow down a match by firing off 3 or 4 fireballs, regain good stage positioning, and then continue on from there. They also aid in his approach. Ontop of this they present a reasonably good edge guard against a lot of characters. Again, this is not to say Mario is OP, he is very beatable, but the strategy is "just press b" covers so many options and is so ridiculously easy to do that I can't call it anything other than stupid.

I don't play Snake, but I'm pretty sure that Marth wins the MU vs Mario. At the very least, it's even. You don't have to block the fireballs all the time, if not at all. Marth's fair eats fireballs and Marth has more range and a better grab than Mario. You can also powershield them, or waveland on platforms to avoid them. You can also run underneath Mario as he's shooting a full hop fireball and hit him with an anti air or grab him when he lands.

 

[DMG]

Marth wins imo but it's slight and varies a lot based on stage. Mario could manage even or close to even on a fair number of stages.

 

[Mischief]

I think it even more or less. Marth does surprisingly well in Pm.

 

[MLGF]

Well TBF, if this mod made all of the non-spacie Melee top tiers become unviable it'd be... well weird to say the least.
Marth just has solid tools for taking on all the new matchups and can still edgeguard rather well too despite some recoveries.

 

[Mr.Random]

Well TBF, if this mod made all of the non-spacie Melee top tiers become unviable it'd be... well weird to say the least.
Marth just has solid tools for taking on all the new matchups and can still edgeguard rather well too despite some recoveries.

^ This is true. Watch PPMD vs Reflex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av2JQO8zuNo

 

[mtmaster]

I can sort of understand why some Melee players prefer Melee over Project M as obviously things are different, and while Project M isn't a perfect game its still great nonetheless. I can't really speak on behalf of Melee players, as I'm not a Melee (even though I owned the the game) player, I'm a Brawl player who transitioned to Project M, but I will agree to an extent that some of the recoveries can be a little ridiculous, albeit fair at the same time.

As far as matchups go from videos I have seen of Melee there is seems to be very little variety in character selection, although the high tier characters as someone mentioned earlier have a pretty high learning curve, for example as much as I like Fox I could never use him as just don't have the kind of finnesse that it requires, but that's beside the point. In Project M with the large cast of characters the mechanics implemented into it, I think the game is pretty balanced in my opinion.

If I were to point out specifics of things that I would like to be changed, then for one give Sheik back her tether. I'm no pro, but even I can see that Sheik on her own has pretty bad recovery compared to a lot of the other characters in the game. Similarly and this just more so me being butthurt lol, but I REALLY wish Toon Link's Up+B was not nerfed, that nerf has dissauded me from using him even though I am aware of the bomb jump (which I admit I suck at doing) and the use of a tether.

 

[Mr.Pickle]

It's because the concept of 'spam' is sort of nebulous in a videogame context; of course people are going to have different opinions of a thing if they're not even in agreement on what it is.

Honestly it'd help a lot if he was actually part of this discussion so he can make his point a little clearer. Otherwise I feel like this thread isn't going anywhere.

 

[Stryker]

A few things to point at here.
Firstly.

Plus, if you're offstage you SHOULD be at a great disadvantage IMO. When you get hit offstage, it shouldn't be a basic occurrence, it should be a life or death matter like what is seen with Roy, Fox, Wolf, Bowser, DK and most definitely Falco.

Fox
Falco
Marth
Sheik
Falcon

>top characters in Melee
>mediocre recoveries

these are the characters you see most being played, so when people say Melee is more exciting to watch than PM, i believe this is why.

you get to watch these characters with great onstage presence combo each other and when sent off stage, they have to truly fight their way back on (with mediocre recoveries that are very susceptible to being edgeguarded) So there never really is any downtime when it comes to action.

Where as being offstage in PM almost feels like taking a breather. The sense of risk and urgency is not always there, which shouldn't be the case when offstage in a platform fighter.

I think this is part of what makes melee so exciting as well. The edge game was not just exciting, but brutal.
You can see this kind of play when looking at some of the match ups mentioned in the first post. Like Roy V Wolf.

Overall though, I don't think there is much wrong with PM recoveries. A very few are a bit too good, but they certainly aren't unmanageable. I think it may be that some characters are balanced around edgeguarding that they cannot do in this matchup, and thus the match up is much more difficult, but this isn't exactly a "problem".

Now onto slightly unrelated things.

What amuses me about some comments we get, and I mean no offense by that, is that people often assume that we don't want their feedback. We release demoes for the key purpose of getting key feedback. There're no need for anyone to feelreticent or even intimidated. We want you to come up to us and tell us if something bothers you. We welcome it.

The second problematic thing that sometimes occur is that with the release of demos, there are sometimes design issues or balance issues that the community will find. We know what the community believes should be fixed, but while we see the game evolve in real time, most poeple only see a static build that doesn't change at all for them until the next release.

Since you know that we're reading the comments, there's a pretty high chance that we know the community's oppinion, but either haven't gotten around tweaking it, or we already have but haven't released a build with the tweak yet.

Nevertheless, the key element to keep in mind is that our demoes exist to get feedback. It's partially why we make them in the first place. Don't be afraid to be brutally honest with us when you meet us.

Not to be harsh or anything, but as a fellow game developer, I have bad news for you.
The second one is completely 100% your fault.
Not yours specifically Vig, but the PMBR's fault.
But certainly not any fault of anyone else but the Devs. (When I say "you", it is in the general terms of "You devs")
You do not communicate with your audience well enough and this is a bad thing.

You say that people continually complain about the static release, but that the evolved version of the game is fine.
You say that you read comments, so people must know that things are being worked on.

If you think people assume you don't want want their feedback, maybe it's because you make them feel like that because you don't acknowledge anything they say.
PMBR can make us feel like we are screaming at a brick wall. And you know what the worst part is? When one person is done screaming at the brick wall, another person comes along and screams the same thing.
Even if, behind that brick wall, there are people listening to the screams, and taking notes, you still have people screaming for no good reason.

If you want people to stop complaining, there is a very simple solution. Acknowledge your mistakes. Again, this isn't a negative light, but you need to be open with your players if you want them to see what good you are doing currently, and not just when the new release comes out.
Take responsibility for things and let players know clearly what is going on, and I think you will find people are more responsive.

For instance.
Seems like common knowledge that Mario Fireballs are going to get nerfed next patch.
So, people have spoken, said mario's fireballs are a problem.
Step 1 complete. You have listened to your audience. Swag. This step is important, but it seems like you guys are good for this.

Next, you need to make sure that mario's fireball gets balanced properly on your test build
Step 2... probably complete. You mentioned before, you get lots of small fixes into your build in between major releases.

So, here is your problem. At this point, you still have people yelling about fireballs, and making "OMG MARIO FIREBALL SPAMZ OP" threads even though you have listened and it may already be fixed.
Seems like the current way of dealing with this is either a Mod closes the thread because it's not productive, or a PMBR member comes in and lets them know it's being look at.
Great! Thats one thread closed. Too bad there are three others that just popped up.
Whats worse, is that there are people who won't post threads, or who are hardly on smash boards, that are equally frustrated with fireballs. They don't feel any better about this at all.
Thats because you don't complete the cycle of communication.
You tell us you are listening, but you don't tell us you've heard us.

Because Step 3 is coming out and telling your players/customers "We hear you, we understand you think this move is a problem. This is why it's a problem and here is what we are working towards to fix this problem."

I promise you, if you posted a list, even a fairly small one, of things you are looking at tweaking and why, you would get alot less **** flung your way.
You says your demo's are for getting feedback, but you can't expect the communication to only go one way.
Hell, even if you reposted all of the random information that the PMBR has scattered throughout the boards about things that are being looked at, I'm sure you would get less people randomly posting about things you have already said.

Because this game's development is ongoing and you have asked for community feedback, once you let us know what you've heard, the thousands of players that are trying to give you positive feedback for the future are going to feel more secure that they game they love is in hands that are going to push it in a good direction. Until you do that get used to hearing "FIX DIDDY BARREL FIRING ON RECOVERY." and "MARIO FIREBALL SPAM SO DUMB" from the community.

 

[DMG]

2/10 you forgot to mention Link

 

[GP&B]

I think a big part about not actively responding to these complaints even when they may be addressed has everything to do with the PMBR wanting everyone to focus on specifically this version of PM. By confirming certain changes to characters, people may stop playing those particular characters which not only damages the meta development of those characters but also makes it harder for the BR to specifically address those characters because they have less meta info to work with. Why keep playing a character if they're going to be made less viable?

Yeah, there's flaws with this kind of developer mindset but the biggest thing that PM needed since its creation was meta stability of which 3.02 has been one of the longest running releases so far iirc. Sure, next release might bring in some huge, sweeping changes to address growing complaints over recoveries and top tier elements, but we need this game to keep growing in its current form so that the next release brings in changes based on the best information possible.

 

[Bleck]

The problem with that mindset is that there's no objectively correct length of time over which a metagame should develop - the Smash community in particular should probably not be trusted with making that judgment.

 

[DMG]

"Gotta wait before banning MK"

*Couple of years pass*

"Game is already dying, it's too late to ban MK"

Thank god for the ability to patch

 

[Hinichii.ez.™]

Marth vs mario is very much in marth's favor. Don't get confused.

 

[DMG]

I dunno about very much. It's like barely a comfortable edge: still gotta work for it.