Project M Social Thread Gold

[PMS | Tink-er]

DACUS and that pivot foxtrotting thing return from brawl. Do you think these might get patched?

 

[DMG]

Sakurai would have to be a bunghole to patch these things, jesus pls don't even fancy the idea

 

[PMS | Tink-er]

Well his entire philosophy is to bring the execution barrier as low as possible, so . . .

 

[MLGF]

A good philosophy is to make the game simple to understand in a foundational level, not cut off the competitive end.
He seems really freaking stubborn about the opposite however, but if he kept those things in they'll probably stay.

 

[Gamegenie222]

Smash 4 video dump for ya'll.

 

[Bleck]

Good read.

Quite the claim to say that Smash 4 is an improvement from Melee and Brawl, considering Brawl was a pretty underrated competitive game and Melee is Melee. I was hoping you could comment on some of these early criticisms:

1. A return of Brawl's defense-oriented neutral. When people say that Melee is "offensive" and Brawl is "defensive," what they really mean is that Melee enables and rewards complex offense- dynamic movement options, safe on-shield pressure, true combos, meaningful strings- while Brawl doesn't. Theorycraft points to Smash 4 being a rerun of Brawl here: again, there is little safe on-shield pressure; again, movement options are limited and committal; again, true combos beyond low-percent tilts are few and far between. I've watched about a dozen Smash 3DS tournaments, and there's plenty of poke game. That's troubling to a lot of people.

In my opinion, Melee's metagame may be offensive on the surface, but is dominated by players who apply these tactics in a more reserved and poke-y way. Mango in particular, who I believe we can all agree is The Best At Melee, is as good as he is not because he has the best technical skill (which he likely does, regardless), but because he has incredible reads and the ability to punish more or less any mistake. I think that aggression, in the context of a fighting game, can essentially be boiled down to acting first, and defense involves reacting correctly to others' aggressive acts - in this sense, I believe that the best Melee players consistently play defensively, and that's why they're consistently successful.

Granted, take this with a grain of salt, 'cause I obviously don't watch/study Melee to the degree that many others do, 'cause I play all the Smash games and a wealth of other games as well. But it seems to me that, for example, there's Mango, and there's Hax. Hax used to play Captain Falcon in the way that I believe Mango plays Fox, but Fox is consistently able to outperform Captain Falcon regardless for various reasons, so he's just flat out the stronger character - and I believe that Hax' inability to displace people like Mango and, to a lesser extent, Mew2King, Leffen and Armada from the top rungs of tournaments is because he tries to play Fox in the manner that everyone believes Fox is best played, which is, interestingly enough, not how Mango plays Fox (or how any of the other top players play their characters, including players like Hungrybox and Axe).

Now, that being said, there's truth to what you and others say here in that a lot of 'offensive' things are less rewarding than they were in Melee, but I think that these individual things aren't necessarily as positive as people generally tend to imply. In this case, I would say that;

a) Dynamic movement options actually reward defensive play, as the ability to move deceptively and reactionarily are at their most rewarding when one uses them to bait and punish.

b) Safe-on shield pressure eliminates the possibility for any non-rushdown character to be strong (i.e Melee's metagame is focused entirely around characters who can essentially ignore the concept of shielding). This is similar to rushdown characters in other fighting games - but succeeding as rushdown characters in other fighting games usually involves successful reads and cerebral rushdown, whereas I believe that shield pressure in Melee essentially involves using high-execution tactics that more or less make it impossible for anyone but the most perfect players to actually escape shield pressure. You can push block in UMVC3 and other games, you can do perfect block strings in UFS4 and other games, but Melee is the only one where escaping shield pressure is (in my opinion) nigh impossible without frame perfect execution and extremely precise reads, and as such I don't think that it's actually a positive thing.

c) True combos and meaningful strings don't seem to exist in Smash 4, but I'm not entirely certain that that's a bad thing. While it's true that true combos are a staple mechanic of every other fighting game, I've argued in the past that Smash's most important difference (or rather, what it should be) when compared to other fighting games is its accessibility. In this context, I believe that combos are essentially a single-player oriented concept in fighting games - your ability to do a combo in most fighting games very rarely has anything to do with what the opposing player(s) do. You play the footsies game and then you catch them, and then you enter into a string of moves that they basically have no part in - almost as if you're basically getting bonus damage by being able to consistently do something that one can only practice via repetition on your own (i.e, being able to do combos has little to do with all of the other meaningful interactions you have with other players). In this sense, while I don't think it's wrong or a bad thing to value true combos, I do think that conceptually it's mostly at odds with the game that Smash should be, based on its accessibility of control and the mechanical structure of the game. As such, I believe the structure of matches in Melee can be summarized as [footsies > hit confirm from one player > combo > KO, or return to start], whereas matches in Smash 4 are basically the same but lack the combo part (whereas matches in Brawl lack the combo part and hit confirming is actually generally a bad thing for the aggressor). It's reasonable to prefer the presence of combos, but it's probably not reasonable to imply that they're necessary to the health of a fighting game (after all, Divekick is actually one of the best fighting games ever made, and has nothing in the way of combos).

It essentially boils down to - yeah, Smash 4 isn't Melee. But we're never gonna get Melee 2, and to denounce Smash 4 because of the differences from Melee is unreasonable. The things that people value in Melee are not necessarily the way things 'should' be, nor can the quality of other Smash games, or other games period, be reasonably determined through the number of similarities to Melee.

2. A slow pace. Granted, fastfalls are quicker, but beyond that Smash 4 seems pretty darn slow. Lots of landing lag. Vectoring. Huge blast zones. Buffed recoveries all around. Guaranteed ledgegrabs. All of the points made in [1] apply here, too. Characters live a long *** time and finishing up a stock often means fishing for a smash attack.

I feel like landing lag is actually not universally better or worse than either Smash game - in Smash 4, I feel like it's more reasonable to say that moves that would be overwhelmingly strong if they didn't have landing lag often tend to, but other less offensive (and I mean offensive here in the sense, like, I take offense at this being a thing) moves often do not. For example, lots of people complain that Marth can no longer short hop f-air effectively - but I would argue that a) he shouldn't have been able to in the first place, and b) none of his other aerials seem to have notable landing lag (were one to assume that l-canceling wasn't a factor in Melee). Melee had a metagame focus on aerials existing as part of strings because of the presence of l-canceling, but notice that the only good characters in Melee, as a result, are characters that can abuse this fully (i.e anyone with bad aerials in Melee isn't viable, full stop). It seems to me like three kinds of moves in Smash 4 have noticeable landing lag - 1) moves that would be heavily abused otherwise (eg. Marth's forward air), 2) moves that are very powerful finishers and otherwise should essentially have the same cooldown as smash attacks (eg. Mario's forward air, and 3) projectiles, the spammability of which would only contribute to a more campy metagame. I don't think any of these are a bad thing.

I honestly don't know what the problem is with vectoring. It... it just seems fine to me. What's the problem?

Huge blast zones are only really a problem because we're used to the small blast zones and early kills of Melee. I think it should be important to note that Sheik is already widely considered one of the best characters in Smash 4, despite what I believe to be a distinct lack of her early kill power from Melee (i.e she can no longer thwack you with a f-air at 40% and instantly get a KO). It's also only a problem in the sense that KOs are generally harder to get - and this is because KO moves in the game tend to (to me, at least) be very precise, unsafe moves that require good timing and accurate reads to actually land on people. I do think, admittedly, that people can survive in Smash 4 to very high percents and that it's often frustrating, but I believe that all of the characters have the tools to apply pressure to recovering characters, so it's not often as bad as it might seem.

On that note, I don't think (and I've made this clear on my discussions on Project M many a time) that strong recoveries are a bad thing. And in Smash 4's case specifically, while there may be a lot of long recoveries, I don't feel as though there are many that aren't predictable and interceptible. In fact, I feel as though there aren't a lot of recoveries that don't trade off distance for control - characters like Rosalina and Pit and Duck Hunt can recover from a ways away, but they have predictable trajectories and uncontrollable distances - the metagame should, in theory, develop in such a way where this becomes a very conspicuous weakness.

Guaranteed ledgegrabs, like vectoring, are a thing that I just don't understand as a negative. I haven't read anywhere as to why they're supposedly negative, so I can't really respond.

It's like, yeah, getting a KO often means landing a smash attack... that's Smash Bros. That's the whole thing. Just 'cause Melee didn't necessarily work that way doesn't mean that every following game should follow its example, you know?

3. A lack of balance. The consensus here is that Smash 4 is shaping up to be the best-balanced game yet, so this is more my criticism than a community criticism. Simply put, I don't buy a lot of this rhetoric -- people thought Brawl would be balanced in its early meta, too. Like Melee, many characters are hard counters to much of the cast: Rosalina puts projectile users, Ness, Sheik, Falcon, and a couple others to shame; Sheik and projectile users dominate Mac; certain offensive / rushdown characters like Sheik, Yoshi, Greninja, and ZSS have the speed, damage, and KO potential to simply outclass the other offensive / rushdown characters; spacers (DHD, custom moves Palutena, Villager) can be super dominant. There are other examples, but you get the idea. Would not be at all surprised to end up with a Melee-sized bunch of viable fighters, which is disappointing for a cast of 51 original movesets.

There's nothing I can really say in response to this - I can't predict whether or not the metagame will eventually devolve into a small pool like Melee did. But I do think it's worth it to give the game a chance. We've been playing Melee for thirteen years and we're still under the impression that the metagame isn't done evolving (well, not me, I think we've determined that Mango playing Fox/Falco is the best, Melee is over, we can all go home now). Why is it that we're quick to denounce Smash 4 after a month? Let's give it a chance, people.

 

[Paradoxium]

The fact that smash 4 can be patched gives me hope that we will finally get a balanced smash game. Because Sakurai is totally lost when it comes to balancing.

 

[Bleck]

I don't think it's that Sakurai has been totally lost when it comes to balance so much that actually balancing the games as fighting games has never been his priority (until now). Melee and Brawl were both intended to be fun party games - there's no denying at this point that Melee's entire competitive metagame was basically an accident, you know?

 

[PMS | Tink-er]

Is PM not the balanced and patched smash game we already have?

 

[Yung Mei]

mei gets all the fun, I cant remember any dreams

ill pm you my friend code, we should play some today L:3c

 

[PMS | Tink-er]

In my opinion, Melee's metagame may be offensive on the surface, but is dominated by players who apply these tactics in a more reserved and poke-y way. Mango in particular, who I believe we can all agree is The Best At Melee, is as good as he is not because he has the best technical skill (which he likely does, regardless), but because he has incredible reads and the ability to punish more or less any mistake. I think that aggression, in the context of a fighting game, can essentially be boiled down to acting first, and defense involves reacting correctly to others' aggressive acts - in this sense, I believe that the best Melee players consistently play defensively, and that's why they're consistently successful.

Granted, take this with a grain of salt, 'cause I obviously don't watch/study Melee to the degree that many others do, 'cause I play all the Smash games and a wealth of other games as well. But it seems to me that, for example, there's Mango, and there's Hax. Hax used to play Captain Falcon in the way that I believe Mango plays Fox, but Fox is consistently able to outperform Captain Falcon regardless for various reasons, so he's just flat out the stronger character - and I believe that Hax' inability to displace people like Mango and, to a lesser extent, Mew2King, Leffen and Armada from the top rungs of tournaments is because he tries to play Fox in the manner that everyone believes Fox is best played, which is, interestingly enough, not how Mango plays Fox (or how any of the other top players play their characters, including players like Hungrybox and Axe).

Now, that being said, there's truth to what you and others say here in that a lot of 'offensive' things are less rewarding than they were in Melee, but I think that these individual things aren't necessarily as positive as people generally tend to imply. In this case, I would say that;

a) Dynamic movement options actually reward defensive play, as the ability to move deceptively and reactionarily are at their most rewarding when one uses them to bait and punish.

b) Safe-on shield pressure eliminates the possibility for any non-rushdown character to be strong (i.e Melee's metagame is focused entirely around characters who can essentially ignore the concept of shielding). This is similar to rushdown characters in other fighting games - but succeeding as rushdown characters in other fighting games usually involves successful reads and cerebral rushdown, whereas I believe that shield pressure in Melee essentially involves using high-execution tactics that more or less make it impossible for anyone but the most perfect players to actually escape shield pressure. You can push block in UMVC3 and other games, you can do perfect block strings in UFS4 and other games, but Melee is the only one where escaping shield pressure is (in my opinion) nigh impossible without frame perfect execution and extremely precise reads, and as such I don't think that it's actually a positive thing.

c) True combos and meaningful strings don't seem to exist in Smash 4, but I'm not entirely certain that that's a bad thing. While it's true that true combos are a staple mechanic of every other fighting game, I've argued in the past that Smash's most important difference (or rather, what it should be) when compared to other fighting games is its accessibility. In this context, I believe that combos are essentially a single-player oriented concept in fighting games - your ability to do a combo in most fighting games very rarely has anything to do with what the opposing player(s) do. You play the footsies game and then you catch them, and then you enter into a string of moves that they basically have no part in - almost as if you're basically getting bonus damage by being able to consistently do something that one can only practice via repetition on your own (i.e, being able to do combos has little to do with all of the other meaningful interactions you have with other players). In this sense, while I don't think it's wrong or a bad thing to value true combos, I do think that conceptually it's mostly at odds with the game that Smash should be, based on its accessibility of control and the mechanical structure of the game. As such, I believe the structure of matches in Melee can be summarized as [footsies > hit confirm from one player > combo > KO, or return to start], whereas matches in Smash 4 are basically the same but lack the combo part (whereas matches in Brawl lack the combo part and hit confirming is actually generally a bad thing for the aggressor). It's reasonable to prefer the presence of combos, but it's probably not reasonable to imply that they're necessary to the health of a fighting game (after all, Divekick is actually one of the best fighting games ever made, and has nothing in the way of combos).

It essentially boils down to - yeah, Smash 4 isn't Melee. But we're never gonna get Melee 2, and to denounce Smash 4 because of the differences from Melee is unreasonable. The things that people value in Melee are not necessarily the way things 'should' be, nor can the quality of other Smash games, or other games period, be reasonably determined through the number of similarities to Melee.



I feel like landing lag is actually not universally better or worse than either Smash game - in Smash 4, I feel like it's more reasonable to say that moves that would be overwhelmingly strong if they didn't have landing lag often tend to, but other less offensive (and I mean offensive here in the sense, like, I take offense at this being a thing) moves often do not. For example, lots of people complain that Marth can no longer short hop f-air effectively - but I would argue that a) he shouldn't have been able to in the first place, and b) none of his other aerials seem to have notable landing lag (were one to assume that l-canceling wasn't a factor in Melee). Melee had a metagame focus on aerials existing as part of strings because of the presence of l-canceling, but notice that the only good characters in Melee, as a result, are characters that can abuse this fully (i.e anyone with bad aerials in Melee isn't viable, full stop). It seems to me like three kinds of moves in Smash 4 have noticeable landing lag - 1) moves that would be heavily abused otherwise (eg. Marth's forward air), 2) moves that are very powerful finishers and otherwise should essentially have the same cooldown as smash attacks (eg. Mario's forward air, and 3) projectiles, the spammability of which would only contribute to a more campy metagame. I don't think any of these are a bad thing.

I honestly don't know what the problem is with vectoring. It... it just seems fine to me. What's the problem?

Huge blast zones are only really a problem because we're used to the small blast zones and early kills of Melee. I think it should be important to note that Sheik is already widely considered one of the best characters in Smash 4, despite what I believe to be a distinct lack of her early kill power from Melee (i.e she can no longer thwack you with a f-air at 40% and instantly get a KO). It's also only a problem in the sense that KOs are generally harder to get - and this is because KO moves in the game tend to (to me, at least) be very precise, unsafe moves that require good timing and accurate reads to actually land on people. I do think, admittedly, that people can survive in Smash 4 to very high percents and that it's often frustrating, but I believe that all of the characters have the tools to apply pressure to recovering characters, so it's not often as bad as it might seem.

On that note, I don't think (and I've made this clear on my discussions on Project M many a time) that strong recoveries are a bad thing. And in Smash 4's case specifically, while there may be a lot of long recoveries, I don't feel as though there are many that aren't predictable and interceptible. In fact, I feel as though there aren't a lot of recoveries that don't trade off distance for control - characters like Rosalina and Pit and Duck Hunt can recover from a ways away, but they have predictable trajectories and uncontrollable distances - the metagame should, in theory, develop in such a way where this becomes a very conspicuous weakness.

Guaranteed ledgegrabs, like vectoring, are a thing that I just don't understand as a negative. I haven't read anywhere as to why they're supposedly negative, so I can't really respond.

It's like, yeah, getting a KO often means landing a smash attack... that's Smash Bros. That's the whole thing. Just 'cause Melee didn't necessarily work that way doesn't mean that every following game should follow its example, you know?



There's nothing I can really say in response to this - I can't predict whether or not the metagame will eventually devolve into a small pool like Melee did. But I do think it's worth it to give the game a chance. We've been playing Melee for thirteen years and we're still under the impression that the metagame isn't done evolving (well, not me, I think we've determined that Mango playing Fox/Falco is the best, Melee is over, we can all go home now). Why is it that we're quick to denounce Smash 4 after a month? Let's give it a chance, people.

The longest things I've ever seen you say in the project m social thread are all about smash 4, which I think is funny.

But anywho, you keep opening your mouth and having an opinion. It's interesting.

 

[Bleck]

Not really sure how I'm supposed to take that.

 

[Gamegenie222]

I see nothing wrong with that. Also I'm just very intrigued by Bleck's Smash 4 write-up post and I do like reading them.

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Can't deny that the man has more than a few good points.

Smooth Criminal

 

[Soft Serve]

In my opinion, Melee's metagame may be offensive on the surface, but is dominated by players who apply these tactics in a more reserved and poke-y way. Mango in particular, who I believe we can all agree is The Best At Melee, is as good as he is not because he has the best technical skill (which he likely does, regardless), but because he has incredible reads and the ability to punish more or less any mistake. I think that aggression, in the context of a fighting game, can essentially be boiled down to acting first, and defense involves reacting correctly to others' aggressive acts - in this sense, I believe that the best Melee players consistently play defensively, and that's why they're consistently successful.

Granted, take this with a grain of salt, 'cause I obviously don't watch/study Melee to the degree that many others do, 'cause I play all the Smash games and a wealth of other games as well. But it seems to me that, for example, there's Mango, and there's Hax. Hax used to play Captain Falcon in the way that I believe Mango plays Fox, but Fox is consistently able to outperform Captain Falcon regardless for various reasons, so he's just flat out the stronger character - and I believe that Hax' inability to displace people like Mango and, to a lesser extent, Mew2King, Leffen and Armada from the top rungs of tournaments is because he tries to play Fox in the manner that everyone believes Fox is best played, which is, interestingly enough, not how Mango plays Fox (or how any of the other top players play their characters, including players like Hungrybox and Axe).

Now, that being said, there's truth to what you and others say here in that a lot of 'offensive' things are less rewarding than they were in Melee, but I think that these individual things aren't necessarily as positive as people generally tend to imply. In this case, I would say that;

a) Dynamic movement options actually reward defensive play, as the ability to move deceptively and reactionarily are at their most rewarding when one uses them to bait and punish.

b) Safe-on shield pressure eliminates the possibility for any non-rushdown character to be strong (i.e Melee's metagame is focused entirely around characters who can essentially ignore the concept of shielding). This is similar to rushdown characters in other fighting games - but succeeding as rushdown characters in other fighting games usually involves successful reads and cerebral rushdown, whereas I believe that shield pressure in Melee essentially involves using high-execution tactics that more or less make it impossible for anyone but the most perfect players to actually escape shield pressure. You can push block in UMVC3 and other games, you can do perfect block strings in UFS4 and other games, but Melee is the only one where escaping shield pressure is (in my opinion) nigh impossible without frame perfect execution and extremely precise reads, and as such I don't think that it's actually a positive thing.

c) True combos and meaningful strings don't seem to exist in Smash 4, but I'm not entirely certain that that's a bad thing. While it's true that true combos are a staple mechanic of every other fighting game, I've argued in the past that Smash's most important difference (or rather, what it should be) when compared to other fighting games is its accessibility. In this context, I believe that combos are essentially a single-player oriented concept in fighting games - your ability to do a combo in most fighting games very rarely has anything to do with what the opposing player(s) do. You play the footsies game and then you catch them, and then you enter into a string of moves that they basically have no part in - almost as if you're basically getting bonus damage by being able to consistently do something that one can only practice via repetition on your own (i.e, being able to do combos has little to do with all of the other meaningful interactions you have with other players). In this sense, while I don't think it's wrong or a bad thing to value true combos, I do think that conceptually it's mostly at odds with the game that Smash should be, based on its accessibility of control and the mechanical structure of the game. As such, I believe the structure of matches in Melee can be summarized as [footsies > hit confirm from one player > combo > KO, or return to start], whereas matches in Smash 4 are basically the same but lack the combo part (whereas matches in Brawl lack the combo part and hit confirming is actually generally a bad thing for the aggressor). It's reasonable to prefer the presence of combos, but it's probably not reasonable to imply that they're necessary to the health of a fighting game (after all, Divekick is actually one of the best fighting games ever made, and has nothing in the way of combos).

It essentially boils down to - yeah, Smash 4 isn't Melee. But we're never gonna get Melee 2, and to denounce Smash 4 because of the differences from Melee is unreasonable. The things that people value in Melee are not necessarily the way things 'should' be, nor can the quality of other Smash games, or other games period, be reasonably determined through the number of similarities to Melee.



I feel like landing lag is actually not universally better or worse than either Smash game - in Smash 4, I feel like it's more reasonable to say that moves that would be overwhelmingly strong if they didn't have landing lag often tend to, but other less offensive (and I mean offensive here in the sense, like, I take offense at this being a thing) moves often do not. For example, lots of people complain that Marth can no longer short hop f-air effectively - but I would argue that a) he shouldn't have been able to in the first place, and b) none of his other aerials seem to have notable landing lag (were one to assume that l-canceling wasn't a factor in Melee). Melee had a metagame focus on aerials existing as part of strings because of the presence of l-canceling, but notice that the only good characters in Melee, as a result, are characters that can abuse this fully (i.e anyone with bad aerials in Melee isn't viable, full stop). It seems to me like three kinds of moves in Smash 4 have noticeable landing lag - 1) moves that would be heavily abused otherwise (eg. Marth's forward air), 2) moves that are very powerful finishers and otherwise should essentially have the same cooldown as smash attacks (eg. Mario's forward air, and 3) projectiles, the spammability of which would only contribute to a more campy metagame. I don't think any of these are a bad thing.

I honestly don't know what the problem is with vectoring. It... it just seems fine to me. What's the problem?

Huge blast zones are only really a problem because we're used to the small blast zones and early kills of Melee. I think it should be important to note that Sheik is already widely considered one of the best characters in Smash 4, despite what I believe to be a distinct lack of her early kill power from Melee (i.e she can no longer thwack you with a f-air at 40% and instantly get a KO). It's also only a problem in the sense that KOs are generally harder to get - and this is because KO moves in the game tend to (to me, at least) be very precise, unsafe moves that require good timing and accurate reads to actually land on people. I do think, admittedly, that people can survive in Smash 4 to very high percents and that it's often frustrating, but I believe that all of the characters have the tools to apply pressure to recovering characters, so it's not often as bad as it might seem.

On that note, I don't think (and I've made this clear on my discussions on Project M many a time) that strong recoveries are a bad thing. And in Smash 4's case specifically, while there may be a lot of long recoveries, I don't feel as though there are many that aren't predictable and interceptible. In fact, I feel as though there aren't a lot of recoveries that don't trade off distance for control - characters like Rosalina and Pit and Duck Hunt can recover from a ways away, but they have predictable trajectories and uncontrollable distances - the metagame should, in theory, develop in such a way where this becomes a very conspicuous weakness.

Guaranteed ledgegrabs, like vectoring, are a thing that I just don't understand as a negative. I haven't read anywhere as to why they're supposedly negative, so I can't really respond.

It's like, yeah, getting a KO often means landing a smash attack... that's Smash Bros. That's the whole thing. Just 'cause Melee didn't necessarily work that way doesn't mean that every following game should follow its example, you know?



There's nothing I can really say in response to this - I can't predict whether or not the metagame will eventually devolve into a small pool like Melee did. But I do think it's worth it to give the game a chance. We've been playing Melee for thirteen years and we're still under the impression that the metagame isn't done evolving (well, not me, I think we've determined that Mango playing Fox/Falco is the best, Melee is over, we can all go home now). Why is it that we're quick to denounce Smash 4 after a month? Let's give it a chance, people.

I'm agreeing with like everything you said, and you're not being condecending or a jerkwad about things
Who are you and what have you done with bleck?

 

[GHNeko]

BLE-HEH-HEH-BLECK is a pretty cool guy eh doesnt afraid of any spooky ghosts.

 

[Comeback Kid]

It would be amazing if you could transfer your 3DS data to the Wii U version and not have to waste time unlocking things you already did.

Doubtful with the whole "grinding is so much fun!" mentality I hear from people who have the mistaken impression that grinding = robust single-player content.

 

[Bleck]

I'm of the opinion that if you like The Grind, that's okay. To each his own.

However, I'm also of the opinion that, **** The Grind. **** everyone who poisons video game development with the populist idea that rolling infinite dice to watch numbers go higher is the height of entertainment.

I just want a goddamn Rathalos Ruby.

 

[DrinkingFood]

Discovered cool new tech for rosaluma. Now we just need a PM2 and this game will actually be fun

 

[Comeback Kid]

Grinding also hurts the competitive game. Sakurai could have allowed custom moves and gameplay altering equipment to be standardized and in the game by default, allowing tournaments to mix and match different elements until they found the best formula.

But without an even playing field and RNG, it's too messy except as a single-player RPG without the adventure.

 

[DMG]

I am a Korean MMORPG master, and all I do is grind. They call me... R. Kelly

 

[Smooth Criminal]

Fuuuuuuuuuck that. Grinding is the pits.

Smooth Criminal

 

[GHNeko]

ya'll are scrubs then.

grindin is ez peze in this gaem

 

[Gamegenie222]

I am a Korean MMORPG master, and all I do is grind. They call me... R. Kelly

Are you so amazing that you have legions of fans fight under your name and yelling out to free your name?

EDIT: From the episode I'm kinda referring to.

 

[shairn]

@ Bleck Combos in Melee aren't true for the most part, there's a lot of interaction between the two players in the form of DI and tech chases, it's just that they're harder to escape than in Sm4sh or Brawl, where characters are so floaty it takes a monster read to follow up on anything that sends off vertically or to tech chase. I can't say I agree with movement options rewarding defnsive play. When you have more movement options and are more free to maneuver around your opponent, it becomes much more worthwhile to try and bait things out since you can actually punish them. The less movement options, the more predictable your movement is, and the more every movement becomes a commitment.

I still enjoy Sm4sh, but I find myself getting angry at it for various reasons, like how good rolls are, and the presence of really campy characters. Marth is still fun, after playing him and Lucina for a while I remembered how to play Brawl Marth and things got better. Sheik tho.

 

[Kidneyjoe]

a) Dynamic movement options actually reward defensive play, as the ability to move deceptively and reactionarily are at their most rewarding when one uses them to bait and punish.

I would like to challenge the assertion that to bait and punish is to play defensively. The bait itself is a non-committed offensive action used to force the opponent into a committed defensive action that can be punished. This is a necessary offensive tool given that any committed offensive action performed in neutral will be punished by a competent opponent. Either way, movement options generally benefit both offense and defense fairly equally.

b) Safe-on shield pressure eliminates the possibility for any non-rushdown character to be strong (i.e Melee's metagame is focused entirely around characters who can essentially ignore the concept of shielding). This is similar to rushdown characters in other fighting games - but succeeding as rushdown characters in other fighting games usually involves successful reads and cerebral rushdown, whereas I believe that shield pressure in Melee essentially involves using high-execution tactics that more or less make it impossible for anyone but the most perfect players to actually escape shield pressure. You can push block in UMVC3 and other games, you can do perfect block strings in UFS4 and other games, but Melee is the only one where escaping shield pressure is (in my opinion) nigh impossible without frame perfect execution and extremely precise reads, and as such I don't think that it's actually a positive thing.

There is no such thing as safe shield pressure in Melee. The closest thing to it would be frame perfect multishines and even that can be thwarted with shield DI. Additionally, escaping shield pressure is less dependent on frame perfect inputs and is instead more about learning what points in the shield pressure are safe and which are not. The reason why people like Mango make shield pressure look inescapable is because they know how to make themselves unpredictable enough to generally not get punished for their pressure.

I honestly don't know what the problem is with vectoring. It... it just seems fine to me. What's the problem?

The only real problem with Vectoring is that it seemingly has less depth than DI. You will always want to vector away during combos in order to get more knockback but the same hitstun and try to escape the combo, whereas with DI you end up with things like PM Ness's down throw where you're DI determines what he gets to hit you with next and you decide accordingly. It's not game breaking or terrible but I can see why someone would prefer DI over vectoring.

Guaranteed ledgegrabs, like vectoring, are a thing that I just don't understand as a negative. I haven't read anywhere as to why they're supposedly negative, so I can't really respond.

Edgehogging forces the opponent to recover to the stage where the endlag of their recovery can be punished. By removing edgehogging they have removed a tool from the arsenal of the edgeguarding player and made it easier to get back to the stage. That's all there is to it, really.

It's like, yeah, getting a KO often means landing a smash attack... that's Smash Bros. That's the whole thing. Just 'cause Melee didn't necessarily work that way doesn't mean that every following game should follow its example, you know?

Having to land a smash attack in order to get a KO isn't really ideal. Because Smash attacks are grounded, stationary, and typically have relatively long startup, landing them on a competent player is going to generally require that you make a hard read. They also tend to have long endlag so whiffing one is more than likely going to get you punished. This, combined with the relative safety of defenseive options like shielding and rolling, results in a situation in which most reliable kill options are so risky that you'd rather just wait until your opponent goofs and you can punish them instead of actively trying to kill them and risk losing your own stock.

 

[Bazkip]

#banned

Their reactions are killing me, too good.

 

[Empyrean]

It would be amazing if you could transfer your 3DS data to the Wii U version and not have to waste time unlocking things you already did.

Doubtful with the whole "grinding is so much fun!" mentality I hear from people who have the mistaken impression that grinding = robust single-player content.

I'm not sure where I heard it or if it was a reliable source or not, but I think that unlocking stuff will take even longer on Wii U version.

---------------

There aren't that many true combos in Smash in general (not counting 64, lel). The reason why people can escape combos easier in Smash 4 is partly because of being able to airdodge out of tumble (even then, frame traps are still a thing and many chars can punish airdodge now). That, and some moves having insane knockback at low percents.

Landing lag shouldn't be an issue unless you play a heavy char. The average move in the game has in between 12-18 frames, not considering the generous autocancel windows. Sure, we can't spam Knee anymore, and Falco's fair is still effectively useless onstage, but I feel as though it makes some sense in most cases.

Not for Pika though. Nothing justifies 25 frames of lag on nair of all moves.

 

[DMG]

#banned

Their reactions are killing me, too good.

*Stage is Corneria*

*It has to be Banned*

They're a couple of years late to the ban-wagon!

 

[GMaster171]

http://www.twitch.tv/gmaster171

Anyone stream PM anymore?

 

[shairn]

We stream our PM weeklies every tuesday at http://twitch.tv/ssbmontreal
We're cooler than Xanadu

 

[standardtoaster]

there's a biweekly fest/tourney starting here. like 12 people are already confirmed going :D

 

[trash?]

I am still in the WORST PART OF ONTARIO I swear to god

tournaments happening all around where I live in every direction, except they're all just too far away ;;

 

[Soft Serve]

AZPM will have a melee/pm/3ds stream later today, starting at like 5 AZ/Mountain time. Idk what that is everywhere else, we dont have daylights savings time because we hate the sun enough already.

 

[Player -0]

I am still in the WORST PART OF ONTARIO I swear to god

tournaments happening all around where I live in every direction, except they're all just too far away ;;

Since you're perfectly in the middle the only logical thing to do is host a giant tournament in the center of the area. That way everyone will go since you're in the middle.

 

[trash?]

I will become the TO ontario needs

we can chill in one of the crappy cottages for the tournament, since this is a vacationer area and nobody uses it after august anyways

 

[shairn]

Doesn't matter where it is in ON since it'll take us 6-7h to get there regardless

Do it

 

[Saito]

How did that hat survive.

 

[MonkUnit]

I wish Smash 4 didn't keep some of the stupid things from Brawl like DK being unable to move backwards with his grounded upB. I am also sure that the Wii U version will still have the automatic fastfall on C-stick D-airs and C-stick down during crouch will still do dtilt instead of d-smash.

 

[DMG]

The more that people play the game, the more that silly videos roll in, the more I will point to: http://smashboards.com/threads/project-m-social-thread-v3-02.339825/page-1007#post-17763068

It's remarkable!