Project M Social Thread Gold

[robosteven]

My guess is because lack of followups, but that wouldn't be too hard to fix.

Flying Slam is hype as ****.

 

[KayB]

MAAAAN YOU GUUYYYYS

ARE THERE ANY GAMES LIKE 999 OR DANGAN RONPA OUT THERE

I NEED THOSE KIND OF STORY GAMES FOR MY LIFEEE

 

[Frost | Odds]

@Bleck I think (technical issues aside?) adding the Flying Slam animation back in as an upward or downward throw on the Klaw would be pretty reasonable- though suicide kills with it shouldn't happen (ie. just make the animation stationary) and allow Bowser to tech chase from the throw or make it a vertical kill through like Zard's uthrow or something. It's unfortunate that the animation is so slow that it's not possible for it to serve as a DI mixup, in any case.

 

[PMS | Tink-er]

Why haven't you applied to be pmdt already, Odds? You're one of, if not the best Bowsers, and you have a history of eSports. I think your redesign ideas have merit, but why pitch them to us when you could just join the dt and test then out yourself.

 

[Rᴏb]

The PMDT definitely needs a Bowser player in their ranks that can provide an opinion that isn't "melee melee melee melee", because that **** just doesn't work for Bowser. It's pretty evident that the dev team has no idea what to do with him since, as 3.5 showed us, basically no one touches him.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Why haven't you applied to be pmdt already, Odds? You're one of, if not the best Bowsers, and you have a history of eSports. I think your redesign ideas have merit, but why pitch them to us when you could just join the dt and test then out yourself.

Honestly, that's my dream. I'd love nothing more in the world. They haven't re-opened applications yet, though (to my knowledge, anyway), so I still have some time to prove my merit via more Odds and Ends videos and stuff, though school is taking the front seat right now.

I've also said some pretty immature things on here in the past, and don't mind taking the time to distance myself from the guy I used to be. I'm trying very hard to strive to the ideal of being someone they'd want on the team, and it's my hope that they're aware of that. My even more remote fantasy is the proverbial Letter from Hogwarts, sans direct application on my part.

The PMDT definitely needs a Bowser player in their ranks that can provide an opinion that isn't "melee melee melee melee", because that **** just doesn't work for Bowser. It's pretty evident that the dev team has no idea what to do with him since, as 3.5 showed us, basically no one touches him.

That's probably pretty harsh. I suspect it's more an issue of them having more pressing matters - I know that cmart in particular is absolutely swamped with real life work. Frankly, I'm surprised and pretty pleased that Bowser got as much attention as he did in 3.5.

 

[Hinichii.ez.™]

Shameless plug.

http://www.twitch.tv/gameunderground

Tonight at like 6 or 7 or so there's a weekly streaming. Only reason I'm even posting this though is because this is the first tourney in forever that I'll be attending and actually trying really hard to actually place in. Lower than 9th place is a failure, so you guys should watch for my garbage tryhard Olimar and Marth on stream tonight, I'll even rep the PMS tag if y'all would like. <3

>did not earn the PMS tag
THERE IS A REASON SO FEW OF YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO STANd AMOUNG THE FEW, THE PROUD, THE LEWD
GOTTA EARN IT YOU TOOL

 

[SunJester]

Let's just make bowser fully assume his Gamera heritage.

New neutral B.

Spoiler: About r/ssbpm's tier list

How in the flying **** can someone think Marth is third best in this game.

That's like two tier lists in a row that put him there.

 

[Chesstiger2612]

@Bleck


The short version: provide him with some of his missing tools with existing moves where possible, scale back his size and some of his more ridiculous moves. I don't think he needs a wholesale redesign - just some medium-to-heavy tuning.

I'm of the opinion that characters should be as different as possible while maintaining a reasonable matchup spread and playability. Fun + Balance > Flavor, in the end. Regardless, what I propose ultimately wouldn't cost Bowser any of his identity or uniqueness - it would just force both Bowser players and their opponents to use more tools in their kits.

1. Reduce his size.

I'm not sure by how much is reasonable, but in a perfect world, IMO he should still be the biggest character in the game, but not by much. The Huge Bowser Experiment failed (sorry @cmart and Jiang), it's time to move on.

For obvious reasons, this would also decrease the size of many or all of Bowser's attacks - and that's okay. In my opinion, Bowser isn't about outspacing his opponent with fair and dtilt -- he's about hard reads, hard punishes, and hard mindgames, and being a damn tank - and in many matchups, his current size and range prevent all of that. Against Falco for example, literally all Bowser should do in neutral most of the time is wait for Falco to jump and laser, then armor through and punish with a dash attack. That's boring, for both sides! In other matchups, his size results in extremely free 0-death combos for his opponent

Reducing his size should also make him less combo-able (which is a good thing, for a character ostensibly all about survivability)

2. Dramatically increase the size of Flame Breath, but make its damage level heavily decay over both distance, and time.

IMO, the best way to give Bowser a projectile without giving him stupid frame traps or messing too much with the current balance, is to effectively give it similar utility to Fox's lasers- tack on a tiny bit of damage (think like 3-4%) from very long range to gently encourage the opponent to approach/put him on a clock, while retaining the utility of Flame Canceling. This would also help stabilize Bowser in matchups where his neutral game is completely invalidated by his opponent playing Super LeftRightLeft Bros - and if the decay speed is appropriately high, the move shouldn't feel at all oppressive or unavoidable. Plus, it'd have more of a 'burst' feeling, which would be pretty cool imo; on top of being relatively easy to implement.

A fireball would be a cool idea, but I don't think it'd be nearly as easy to implement, nor fit as neatly into Bowser's overall design.

3. Decrease Bowser's reliance on a tiny subset of his moveset by tuning and differentiating his moves

Currently, Bowser builds damage primarily by use of nair, fair, dash attack, and dash grab (except against FFers, who also eat a lot of utilts). His kills against opponents who know how to spotdodge and/or DI the Koopa Klaw, come overwhelmingly often from the tipper fair, and sometimes upB or dsmash against floaties. Fsmash and Usmash are almost entirely useless, ftilt is pretty niche, the Koopa Klaw is utterly useless in neutral and is typically an inferior punish to uair or fair (again, provided the opponent knows how to DI it).

So, there's a few problems here. Fair has a huge role overlap as often being Bowser's best move for spacing (its range is outrageous), killing (at the tip), and comboing (in the sourspot). IMO, a move as good at comboing and spacing and building damage as this one should have limited utility as a kill move - every time I whack someone with this and they die at 90% from the middle of the stage, I cry inside. Similarly, it makes me weep that I so rarely have occasion to use the Koopa Klaw (other than to style), ftilt, or Bowser's smashes.

So, in my opinion, there's a bunch of things we can do. Some combination of the following would be a healthy start:

a) Decrease the KBG on the tipper fair. Dramatically.

It's cool, but it's just too centralizing - and playing against this is hell, particularly on tiny stages like WW and YS.

b) Improve Bowser's F- and U- smashes.

Yeah, I get that fsmash is hype in the extremely rare circumstance that it hits something, but seriously guys, it never, ever should. Bowser would be way more hype to watch, IMHO, if he had more reason to use FSmash more frequently. I think this should be at least a few frames faster, have armor from earlier on in the move (anyone challenging it from the ground can still choose to use a grab instead), and it should break shields. The current one does a lot of shield damage, but it's next to impossible for Bowser to actually meaningfully hit his opponent's shield again before it's fully recharged - the current shield damage is useless.

Even with all of those changes, if you get hit (or shield broken) by that move, you bloody well deserved it.

As for Usmash, it simply doesn't have the KB to justify its existence- utilt is almost as good at killing floaties and is much, much faster - and short hop uair is of a comparable speed while having much greater KB. You could argue that usmash has some form of limited utility in terms of challenging opponents coming directly from above, but, seriously guys, that never ever actually happens.

There's a couple things that could be done there as well. First, boringly, its vanilla properties could be buffed. Great - I'm all for that. That would be enough.

A more interesting idea, IMO, would be to give this move invincibility frames while it's being charged as well as during the startup. He crouches down during the charge animation, so it fits visually (particularly given how he explodes upwards, as though he was extremely tense) - and it'd give him a hard punish for a hard read, which fits very well thematically. Note that this move would still be extraordinarily punishable during the endlag and still have a relatively slow startup, so making it "OP" would be very difficult.

I, personally, would give this move both statistical bonuses and the invincibility thing, because it really is super useless right now.

I think we can all agree that the hypest Bowser is the one that uses a lot of smashes. Unfortunately, they're really just not (barring dsmash) currently usable for a Bowser player that actually wants to win - my style is incredibly boring and simple, because that's just what's optimal right now. I wish that were not the case.

c) This one is probably more controversial, but I think Bowser's ftilt currently has too much role overlap with the dtilt in terms of being a long-range spacing move with some kill potential. Given the reigns, I would reduce its range dramatically, increase its speed and endlag, and significantly increase its kill power (while possibly adding a fire effect on the fist).

That may be a bit extreme, so I think the more moderate/agreeable solution (especially given that its range would already be decreased by virtue of Bowser himself being smaller) would be a simple, mild-to-moderate KBG increase.

d) Add utility to the Koopa Klaw by virtue of DI mixups (an additional throw direction?) and/or making it less crappy in general.

I'll repeat myself from earlier: KK is utterly useless in neutral. It's just too slow to not be spotdodged, and it's too much commitment to be thrown out with any frequency. Its only utility right now is strictly as a punish tool - and at that, it's pretty poor due to how easy it is to DI out of. In my opinion, KK epitomizes everything Bowser is/should be about - hard reads, getting in on an opponent unconventionally, and punishing the hell out of him for it. There are a hundred ways that this could be made either better at punishing, or usable in the neutral game, and I'm not too picky. I'd just like to be able to use this move outside of very niche situations or against clueless opponents.

4. Decrease the skill floor to playing a properly mobile Bowser

Consistently perfect wavelanding with Bowser is unbelievably difficult, given how frequently he needs to do it, and how central it is to his new game. IMO, this stuff is absolutely essential to playing Bowser properly, much like it is to Ganon - but Bowser players need to consistently hit 2 and 3 frame windows in order to do this, every single time, and a good Bowser does it often. A single miss can be absolutely disastrous. The level of difficulty to do the same thing with Ganon is much more reasonable, especially in high-pressure tournament situations.

I've been practicing PWLs for over an hour a day, pretty much every day since 3.5 came out, and I still mess up regularly. I know I don't suck that bad, given that I have a fairly respectable melee Falco and PM Wolf - and if it's this frustrating for me, this probably renders the tech totally unusable for anyone newer to Bowser.

5. Usable spotdodge, please.

Please.

Anyway, I got more opinions, but that's probably a pretty good place to call it off.

tl:dr: screw you, read my complicated feelings about Bowser

I agree with most of this. It saddens me that Bowser is too big but it's just... true.
About up-smash, your version of the move still has a big overlap with up-tilt and just buffing the stats makes the entire move acceptable by being terrible in some aspects and "overbuffed" in others. I'd rather see a completely new move.
With f-tilt, I always thought of it as a d-tilt alternative which is slower but has more range, and I thought decreasing range and making it faster would make them more similar. But rethinking it, the roles would be completely different now because one of the moves would be a low commitment poke and the other one a high commitment potential KO-move.
About #4, I'm not entirely sure. Fox, as example, also has high skill floor (althoguh it got a bit better in PM), and I am supporter of the thesis that balance gets disrupted by too different difficulty curves (while technical difficulty isn't the only difficulty which counts here, but the main one since move choice is comparably difficult with most characters). I could give reasons for this thesis here if you want but I think it is pretty intuitive. So at some point one update has to work on a more even difficulty curve spread in general. I can see the PWL difficulty could be too much of a leap in this curve right now, but I'm against making Bowser's stuff easier in general. Other windows can be shortened in exchange or something, so that would maybe a logical way to deal with that disparity.

Btw, are you mainly Bowser-focused in your theorycrafting or do you have content and suggestions regarding other characters to share as well?

 

[Saito]

Honestly, that's my dream. I'd love nothing more in the world. They haven't re-opened applications yet, though (to my knowledge, anyway), so I still have some time to prove my merit via more Odds and Ends videos and stuff, though school is taking the front seat right now.

0/10, Missed a chance to say the _odds are that I wouldn't make it

 

[Draco_The]

@Eternal Yoshi
I'm not the kind of guy that hates on companies like most people that visit IGN and similar sites do. I don't care if EA likes dem money through DLC or whatever. If they release a good game, I'll enjoy it and that's all.

That said, I hate Capcom. They did many things wrong, like grabbing Resident Evil and turn it into a mindless shooter, but what they did with USFIV just has no fu***ng name.

Reused stuff from SFxT (characters and stages), hyped a "mistery" character for months that turned out to be a fu***ng clone of Cammy, lots of known bugs/glitches from older versions of SF4 that were never fixed, online on PC broken (and even after some updates it's still very bad), not even a damn option to play Edition Select online or to put the dummy in training mode to use delayed wake up at launch, no rival scenes for the new characters (although after AE this isn't surprising), no trials at launch either (and even know for some reason my game has two trials menus and one of them has an awkward name and I don't even have nor had mods installed), and IMO the worst thing of all: the game wasn't polished. At all. All new characters felt really awkward. Animations and sound effects lacked the power that the rest of the cast has. Just take a look at Hugo's AA Ultra or Elena's throws. And all the problems with dem hurtboxes... My God. Elena, Poison's invincible tea-bagging and Hugo's awkward stun animation without hurtboxes at the start. And some other stuff like completely messed up moves priorities for new characters.

And lots of other things, like the recently released Omega mode which is just an amateur mod of SF4 with lots of animation problems, stupid infinites (I mean, how could they not find Gen's at least) and other glitches.

 

[Frost | Odds]

I agree with most of this. It saddens me that Bowser is too big but it's just... true.
1. About up-smash, your version of the move still has a big overlap with up-tilt and just buffing the stats makes the entire move acceptable by being terrible in some aspects and "overbuffed" in others. I'd rather see a completely new move.

2. With f-tilt, I always thought of it as a d-tilt alternative which is slower but has more range, and I thought decreasing range and making it faster would make them more similar. But rethinking it, the roles would be completely different now because one of the moves would be a low commitment poke and the other one a high commitment potential KO-move.

3. About [decreasing the skill floor], I'm not entirely sure. Fox, as example, also has high skill floor (although it got a bit better in PM), and I am supporter of the thesis that balance gets disrupted by too different difficulty curves (while technical difficulty isn't the only difficulty which counts here, but the main one since move choice is comparably difficult with most characters). I could give reasons for this thesis here if you want but I think it is pretty intuitive. So at some point one update has to work on a more even difficulty curve spread in general. I can see the PWL difficulty could be too much of a leap in this curve right now, but I'm against making Bowser's stuff easier in general. Other windows can be shortened in exchange or something, so that would maybe a logical way to deal with that disparity.

1. That's fair enough. I'd be happy to see any redesign of usmash, frankly - though I think you're overstating the potential overlap with utilt simply because utilt is so fast and usmash is ... not.

2. Yup.

3. It's complicated. Bowser's skill floor without optimizing him with stuff like perfect wavelands, pivots, klaw cancels, fortresshogs, and so forth is pretty low - but his skill floor with just the wavelands, even just disregarding that other stuff, is vastly higher than Fox's. I don't play Fox at all, but I can beat many or most of the local fox mains and do stuff like waveshine, doubleshine, SHDL just fine just from like 2 weeks of Falco practice many months ago.

Fox is an incredibly easy character to play very effectively. Bowser is very difficult to play effectively except at a very low level, regardless of how difficult his tech is - and I assure you, it ain't easy. The perfect wavelands are by far the most prohibitively difficult tech in relation to how frequently they need to be used, and there's already a precedent for much easier PWLs in Ganon, so I can conceive of no reason to not make them much better- especially because Ganon is already a much easier character than Bowser at basically every level of play.

Btw, are you mainly Bowser-focused in your theorycrafting or do you have content and suggestions regarding other characters to share as well?

I've invested a pretty solid chunk of time into Puff, Marth, Falco, Wolf, Zard, Link, Tink, Luigi, [Melee] Ganon, Kirby, Samus, Sheik, Sonic, and Wario - and dabbled in others. That said, I never played any of the above (barring maybe Puff) to a terribly high level, so I'm not nearly as qualified to speak about any of those as I am about Bowser.

Bowser's also just low hanging fruit right now, designwise - because he's so flawed currently, he kinda merits more discussion along these lines than most other characters.

 

[PlateProp]

Spoiler: About r/ssbpm's tier list

How in the flying **** can someone think Marth is third best in this game.

That's like two tier lists in a row that put him there.

Because marth is really ****ing good in 3.5 right now?


Also does anyone know if Ike's dair spikes/meteors through the entire length of the sword or just at his hands/hilt?

 

[PsionicSabreur]

*If you made a word cloud of this post 'Bowser' would be huge.*

Yo I like a lot of your ideas, but would like to provide a perspective I feel is missing on a few. Hope it doesn't come across as nitpicking.

For obvious reasons, this would also decrease the size of many or all of Bowser's attacks - and that's okay. In my opinion, Bowser isn't about outspacing his opponent with fair and dtilt -- he's about hard reads, hard punishes, and hard mindgames, and being a damn tank - and in many matchups, his current size and range prevent all of that. Against Falco for example, literally all Bowser should do in neutral most of the time is wait for Falco to jump and laser, then armor through and punish with a dash attack. That's boring, for both sides! In other matchups, his size results in extremely free 0-death combos for his opponent

Hard reads are great and all, but are ultimately useless without a way to force a decision from your opponent. So, while as a Bowser player you might view that end result as more important than anything, as someone who's learning how to play as and against Bowser, I think that he's all about throwing his weight around to choke out his opponent and leave them with nowhere to run. Bowser's size and range are more conducive to that than traditional zoning, imo. For the most part I wouldn't mind a minor resizing/reposturing, though. I liked the hurtbox idea that was mentioned earlier, too.

2. Dramatically increase the size of Flame Breath, but make its damage level heavily decay over both distance, and time.

Reminds me of Bowser's Inside Story, sorta. Would be cool but I also like the sizable chip damage at medium range and conversions/pressure at close range it offers now. Less endlag or something along the lines of the last burst of fire getting a range and/or power boost could also patch it up, I think.

3. Decrease Bowser's reliance on a tiny subset of his moveset by tuning and differentiating his moves

Currently, Bowser builds damage primarily by use of nair, fair, dash attack, and dash grab (except against FFers, who also eat a lot of utilts). His kills against opponents who know how to spotdodge and/or DI the Koopa Klaw, come overwhelmingly often from the tipper fair, and sometimes upB or dsmash against floaties. Fsmash and Usmash are almost entirely useless, ftilt is pretty niche, the Koopa Klaw is utterly useless in neutral and is typically an inferior punish to uair or fair (again, provided the opponent knows how to DI it).

So, there's a few problems here. Fair has a huge role overlap as often being Bowser's best move for spacing (its range is outrageous), killing (at the tip), and comboing (in the sourspot). IMO, a move as good at comboing and spacing and building damage as this one should have limited utility as a kill move - every time I whack someone with this and they die at 90% from the middle of the stage, I cry inside. Similarly, it makes me weep that I so rarely have occasion to use the Koopa Klaw (other than to style), ftilt, or Bowser's smashes.

...

a) Decrease the KBG on the tipper fair. Dramatically.

It's fine for Bowser to have good, reliable KO moves. One line of thought that hurts heavies design wise is: "This guy is slow and powerful (i.e. should be good at KOing) so we should make his KO moves unwieldy and slow right? That fast guy, though? He's fast. Make his KO move fast." High-utility fair still leaves room for creative usage in itself and lets Bowser keep the foreboding stage presence he thrives off of. The move isn't even that good in a vacuum. It's got solid range and power, but neither are unprecedented among the cast and the whole thing is offset by Bowser's token high landing lag and trouble getting into the air.

In general I think you're being rather pessimistic about the usefulness of a lot of moves, though. You tend to border on saying that because an attack is poor or worse than another move in one aspect or phase of the game, it has no reason to be used at all given the risk involved, which I tend to disagree with as far as optimization goes.
Take Koopa Klaw for example. You say it's largely useless in neutral, which hardly makes it unique from a vast number of any character's moves if we're talking about a traditional, noncommittal neutral. What is stopping Bowser from putting in the movement and space control work to set it up properly in a game? Have you theorized much on how to corner at the ledge or on a platform so that you can place yourself in situations where the move is more threatening? Koopa Klaw forward also does 20% and at least puts them on platforms easily, I'd say it has advantages as a punish.
Even given that, I think it's a little too results-oriented to expect that Bowser's neutral should be based on breaking neutral with more aerial command grabs.

c) This one is probably more controversial, but I think Bowser's ftilt currently has too much role overlap with the dtilt in terms of being a long-range spacing move with some kill potential. Given the reigns, I would reduce its range dramatically, increase its speed and endlag, and significantly increase its kill power (while possibly adding a fire effect on the fist).

Long range moves are sort of in a class of their own because even if they're redundant by classification, they aren't necessarily by coverage. Dtilt hits low, so it can't block out a lot of SHFFLs and aerial crossups that ftilt is apt to stop with good duration, range, and overall meatiness.
I wouldn't mind tweaking ftilt a little bit in some ways, but I don't think a redesign is in order. I'd rather just have a straight KBG increase on it, no toll necessary.

A lot of these suggestions would be cool, it's just that in the end you could reason that if Bowser mainly has so much trouble setting up his niche moves because he just doesn't have the footwork, then why not shorten his empty landing and increase initial dash speed (the primary reason that he's so slow) or something?

I feel so uncomfortable posting so much PM stuff in the PM social.

 

[Lizalfos]

1. That's fair enough. I'd be happy to see any redesign of usmash, frankly - though I think you're overstating the potential overlap with utilt simply because utilt is so fast and usmash is ... not.

2. Yup.

3. It's complicated. Bowser's skill floor without optimizing him with stuff like perfect wavelands, pivots, klaw cancels, fortresshogs, and so forth is pretty low - but his skill floor with just the wavelands, even just disregarding that other stuff, is vastly higher than Fox's. I don't play Fox at all, but I can beat many or most of the local fox mains and do stuff like waveshine, doubleshine, SHDL just fine just from like 2 weeks of Falco practice many months ago.

You got good at playing Fox by playing Falco? What?

To SHDL so that both lasers hit the opponent is a frame perfect input.

Like, I could grind tech and have a Fox with all the general tech, but by playing Falco????

 

[PlateProp]

You got good at playing Fox by playing Falco? What?

To SHDL so that both lasers hit the opponent is a frame perfect input.

Like, I could grind tech and have a Fox with all the general tech, but by playing Falco????

Playing Squirtle makes me good at Ike's QD shenanigans since they're basic ***** hydroplanes/super rars.

 

[Vashimus]

I'm not the kind of guy that hates on companies like most people that visit IGN and similar sites do. I don't care if EA likes dem money through DLC or whatever. If they release a good game, I'll enjoy it and that's all.

I'm not going to tell you not to play games you think are fun, but this is an incredibly selfish mentality to have. You can say you don't really care about the going-ons in the industry and just quietly buy and play your games, but it's not always about you. The littlest things add up and still affect the rest of us who do care.

 

[Plum]

>did not earn the PMS tag
THERE IS A REASON SO FEW OF YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO STANd AMOUNG THE FEW, THE PROUD, THE LEWD
GOTTA EARN IT YOU TOOL

I dunno man, pretty sure all you have to do is pay for Premium and change your name... don't even have to ask an admin to change it for you anymore

 

[Zarek]

@Eternal Yoshi
I'm not the kind of guy that hates on companies like most people that visit IGN and similar sites do. I don't care if EA likes dem money through DLC or whatever. If they release a good game, I'll enjoy it and that's all.

That said, I hate Capcom. They did many things wrong, like grabbing Resident Evil and turn it into a mindless shooter, but what they did with USFIV just has no fu***ng name.

Reused stuff from SFxT (characters and stages), hyped a "mistery" character for months that turned out to be a fu***ng clone of Cammy, lots of known bugs/glitches from older versions of SF4 that were never fixed, online on PC broken (and even after some updates it's still very bad), not even a damn option to play Edition Select online or to put the dummy in training mode to use delayed wake up at launch, no rival scenes for the new characters (although after AE this isn't surprising), no trials at launch either (and even know for some reason my game has two trials menus and one of them has an awkward name and I don't even have nor had mods installed), and IMO the worst thing of all: the game wasn't polished. At all. All new characters felt really awkward. Animations and sound effects lacked the power that the rest of the cast has. Just take a look at Hugo's AA Ultra or Elena's throws. And all the problems with dem hurtboxes... My God. Elena, Poison's invincible tea-bagging and Hugo's awkward stun animation without hurtboxes at the start. And some other stuff like completely messed up moves priorities for new characters.

And lots of other things, like the recently released Omega mode which is just an amateur mod of SF4 with lots of animation problems, stupid infinites (I mean, how could they not find Gen's at least) and other glitches.

Not to mention what they did to Megaman. I love Megaman.

 

[Yung Mei]

>did not earn the PMS tag
THERE IS A REASON SO FEW OF YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN TO STANd AMOUNG THE FEW, THE PROUD, THE LEWD
GOTTA EARN IT YOU TOOL

pms is lame

i just learned im not rockin it anymore
hypeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

 

[Lizalfos]

The end of an age.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Hard reads are great and all, but are ultimately useless without a way to force a decision from your opponent. So, while as a Bowser player you might view that end result as more important than anything, as someone who's learning how to play as and against Bowser, I think that he's all about throwing his weight around to choke out his opponent and leave them with nowhere to run. Bowser's size and range are more conducive to that than traditional zoning, imo. For the most part I wouldn't mind a minor resizing/reposturing, though. I liked the hurtbox idea that was mentioned earlier, too.

Absolutely, option coverage/choking the opponent out is everything in the neutral game - but Bowser can already do some of that with existing options when his opponent is already cornered. The trouble is, Bowser has no means of gaining stage position in the first place, nor of forcing opponents to approach him. Compounding this problem is how easy it is to reset Bowser to an awful stage position by grabbing him.

He has some interesting reactive tools such as shield -> upB, dash attack to armor through opponent, dash grab to punish whiffs, and so forth; the problem with his reactive tools is that
a. His only such tool that's both fast enough to actually hit a decent opponent and actually has significant kill power is the Fair (and upB, against floaties)
b. His damage-building tools are for the most part either too slow to hit realistic opponents outside of tech chase situations (see: Klaw, ftilt) or too polarized in terms of effectiveness vs fastfallers and floaties (utilt/dsmash which demolishes spacies but are useless against sub-high% floaties, dash attack with similar story though it's necessary to get in on projectiles, grab which = tech chase against FFs, no followup on floaties)

In the neutral game, basically Bowser can handle most opponents if they commit first, but gets destroyed if he commits first - and because his neutral game sucks so hard, he has no means of forcing most opponents to commit first. This is why I'm pretty bent on the Flame Cancel change - by encouraging the opponent to approach Bowser, we may be able to force him to actually interact with Bowser, thus enabling the aforementioned hard reads (along with suitable speed increases to his punish moves).

It's pretty much fine for Bowser to have good, reliable KO moves. That's one line of thought nobody ever really acknowledges that hurts heavies design wise: "This guy is slow and powerful (i.e. should be good at KOing) so we should make his KO moves unwieldy and slow right? That fast guy, though? He's fast. Make his KO move fast." High-utility fair still leaves room for creative usage in itself and lets Bowser keep the foreboding stage presence he thrives off of. The move isn't even that good in a vacuum. It's got solid range and power, but neither are unprecedented among the cast and the whole thing is offset by Bowser's token high landing lag and trouble getting into the air.

You hit the nail on the head regarding the need for fast KO moves, though you're dead wrong about fair not being that good in a vacuum - it's probably the single best aerial in the game when considered in a vacuum. Imagine if Fox, or Kirby, or Mario had the same move with the same hitboxes.

Anyway, the need for fast kill moves is why I propose making his other kill options faster and better in general - because at the moment there's simply very little need to use any of them. If I fsmash or usmash ever, it's either in a friendly, or by accident.

In general I think you're being rather pessimistic about the usefulness of a lot of moves, though. You tend to border on saying that because an attack is poor or worse than another move in one aspect or phase of the game, it has no reason to be used at all given the risk involved, which I tend to disagree with as far as optimization goes.
Take Koopa Klaw for example. You say it's largely useless in neutral, which hardly makes it unique from a vast number of any character's moves if we're talking about a traditional, noncommittal neutral. What is stopping Bowser from putting in the movement and space control work to set it up properly in a game?
Have you theorized much on how to corner at the ledge or on a platform so that you can place yourself in situations where the move is more threatening? Koopa Klaw forward also does 20% and at least puts them on platforms easily, I'd say it has advantages as a punish.

A few things, bearing in mind that we're talking purely about neutral atm:
1. It's slow as hell - when considered along with its effective range, KK is not nearly quick enough to punish any realistic neutral game options from an intelligent opponent (and, again, can always be spotdodged on reaction). This being the case, it doesn't constitute a credible threat, or affect the game state just by virtue of its existence (compared to, for example, Marth's dtilt).
2. It's incredibly laggy. A missed Klaw is death for Bowser, meaning he can only really go for it in situations where it's guaranteed, or Bowser has an incredibly hard read.
3. Role overlap. In almost every situation where KK is possible, there's a better option. The KK itself is extremely easy to spotdodge completely on reaction in any neutral situation, but Bowser has other tools against which that's not relevant. Against a shielding opponent when falling from above, it's always better for Bowser to use a flame cancel or aerial or tomahawk->something instead. On the ground, any opponent who gets hit by this in the neutral game, isn't worth playing against - Bowser should be using his dash grab instead, or simply poking with jabs and dtilts, and threatening to dash attack or dash grab.
4. No means of setup, no real mixups. If Bowser had projectiles or something, I might be able to see this, but Bowser has nothing to 'set up' in the neutral game that would help him land a Klaw.

So, given its short range, slow speed, and huge endlag, it's very emphatically a punish move and that's fine. I wouldn't have a problem with that, were it not for the fact that it's also a crappy punish move in most circumstances. Simple DI renders it no more rewarding most of the time than moves that are much, much easier to hit.

Even given that, I think it's a little too results-oriented to expect that Bowser's neutral should be based on breaking neutral with more aerial command grabs.

Maybe, but it'd be a hell of a lot more fun than a neutral that's based on reactively dash attacking through/ fairing anything the opponent does.

Long range moves are sort of in a class of their own because even if they're redundant by classification, they aren't necessarily by coverage. Dtilt hits low, so it can't block out a lot of SHFFLs and aerial crossups that ftilt is apt to stop with good duration, range, and overall meatiness.
I wouldn't mind tweaking ftilt a little bit in some ways, but I don't think a redesign is in order. I'd rather just have a straight KBG increase on it, no toll necessary.

That's not my opinion, but it's still totally reasonable - I really don't anticipate a redesign.

A lot of these suggestions would be cool, it's just that in the end you could reason that if Bowser mainly has so much trouble setting up his niche moves because he just doesn't have the footwork, then why not shorten his empty landing and increase initial dash speed (the primary reason that he's so slow) or something?

"Setting up" for niche moves is only possible via mixups or projectiles - and neither is meaningful regarding Bowser's crappy kill moves because they're so slow that there's no mixup potential. The opponent can always cover whatever other option Bowser is threatening and then respond to Bowser's extremely slow and/or short ranged move - much like one can block Fox's Illusion option before reacting to the Firefox, but much, much easier.

Unless/until they're made significantly faster or given some other utility, usmash, and Fsmash will remain completely useless, and Klaw will remain extremely niche.

Despite all this, I should stress that Bowser isn't actually a terrible character right now balancewise, and can totally win every (or almost every) matchup. He could stand to be better, but my primary concern is with his design, not necessarily just his balance. Playing as, or against Bowser right now just isn't nearly as much fun as it could be with relatively minor, reasonable changes.

I've also edited this post about 7 times since posting, pls refresh page before quoting.

Heh, I should compile all my bowser-related thoughts into a novel-length memoir. "What are the Odds? The Inside Story of a Bowser Main"

it'll sell millions

 

[Professor Gravy]

wow the PM social full of genuinely insightful PM related stuff? I never thought id live to see the day
*dies*

 

[Soft Serve]

lol I just recorded on videos on my phone because I was too lazy to turn my computer on to use my dazzle, and I wanted sound because I can'tget audio out of it

You can clearly see my dazzle in the frame too

I feel like a chump loll

 

[Hinichii.ez.™]

pms is lame

i just learned im not rockin it anymore
hypeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

You're dead to me

 

[Lizalfos]

Shameless plug.

http://www.twitch.tv/gameunderground

Tonight at like 6 or 7 or so there's a weekly streaming. Only reason I'm even posting this though is because this is the first tourney in forever that I'll be attending and actually trying really hard to actually place in. Lower than 9th place is a failure, so you guys should watch for my garbage tryhard Olimar and Marth on stream tonight, I'll even rep the PMS tag if y'all would like. <3

Who is gushers is he you??

Edit: PMS what is your deinterlacing method of choice?

 

[Bazkip]

Yoooo just hit 1000 uploads on the SSBMontreal Youtube

 

[PlateProp]

lol I just recorded on videos on my phone because I was too lazy to turn my computer on to use my dazzle, and I wanted sound because I can'tget audio out of it

You can clearly see my dazzle in the frame too

I feel like a chump loll

Get an lgp and stop being a pleb

 

[SunJester]

How does game underground only have 100 viewers right now?

http://www.twitch.tv/GameUnderground

Get on it guys!

 

[Lizalfos]

Get an lgp and stop being a pleb

I demand that you educate me.

 

[PsionicSabreur]

Absolutely, option coverage/choking the opponent out is everything in the neutral game - but Bowser can already do some of that with existing options when his opponent is already cornered. The trouble is, Bowser has no means of gaining stage position in the first place, nor of forcing opponents to approach him. Compounding this problem is how easy it is to reset Bowser to an awful stage position by grabbing him.

He has some interesting reactive tools such as shield -> upB, dash attack to armor through opponent, dash grab to punish whiffs, and so forth; the problem with his reactive tools is that
a. His only such tool that's both fast enough to actually hit a decent opponent and actually has significant kill power is the Fair (and upB, against floaties)
b. His damage-building tools are for the most part either too slow to hit realistic opponents outside of tech chase situations (see: Klaw, ftilt) or too polarized in terms of effectiveness vs fastfallers and floaties (utilt/dsmash which demolishes spacies but are useless against sub-high% floaties, dash attack with similar story though it's necessary to get in on projectiles, grab which = tech chase against FFs, no followup on floaties)

In the neutral game, basically Bowser can handle most opponents if they commit first, but gets destroyed if he commits first - and because his neutral game sucks so hard, he has no means of forcing most opponents to commit first. This is why I'm pretty bent on the Flame Cancel change - by encouraging the opponent to approach Bowser, we may be able to force him to actually interact with Bowser, thus enabling the aforementioned hard reads (along with suitable speed increases to his punish moves).


You hit the nail on the head regarding the need for fast KO moves, though you're dead wrong about fair not being that good in a vacuum - it's probably the single best aerial in the game when considered in a vacuum. Imagine if Fox, or Kirby, or Mario had the same move with the same hitboxes.

Anyway, the need for fast kill moves is why I propose making his other kill options faster and better in general - because at the moment there's simply very little need to use any of them. If I fsmash or usmash ever, it's either in a friendly, or by accident.


A few things, bearing in mind that we're talking purely about neutral atm:
1. It's slow as hell - when considered along with its effective range, KK is not nearly quick enough to punish any realistic neutral game options from an intelligent opponent (and, again, can always be spotdodged on reaction). This being the case, it doesn't constitute a credible threat, or affect the game state just by virtue of its existence (compared to, for example, Marth's dtilt).
2. It's incredibly laggy. A missed Klaw is death for Bowser, meaning he can only really go for it in situations where it's guaranteed, or Bowser has an incredibly hard read.
3. Role overlap. In almost every situation where KK is possible, there's a better option. The KK itself is extremely easy to spotdodge completely on reaction in any neutral situation, but Bowser has other tools against which that's not relevant. Against a shielding opponent when falling from above, it's always better for Bowser to use a flame cancel or aerial or tomahawk->something instead. On the ground, any opponent who gets hit by this in the neutral game, isn't worth playing against - Bowser should be using his dash grab instead, or simply poking with jabs and dtilts, and threatening to dash attack or dash grab.
4. No means of setup, no real mixups. If Bowser had projectiles or something, I might be able to see this, but Bowser has nothing to 'set up' in the neutral game that would help him land a Klaw.

So, given its short range, slow speed, and huge endlag, it's very emphatically a punish move and that's fine. I wouldn't have a problem with that, were it not for the fact that it's also a crappy punish move in most circumstances. Simple DI renders it no more rewarding most of the time than moves that are much, much easier to hit.


Maybe, but it'd be a hell of a lot more fun than a neutral that's based on reactively dash attacking through/ fairing anything the opponent does.


That's not my opinion, but it's still totally reasonable - I really don't anticipate a redesign.


"Setting up" for niche moves is only possible via mixups or projectiles - and neither is meaningful regarding Bowser's crappy kill moves because they're so slow that there's no mixup potential. The opponent can always cover whatever other option Bowser is threatening and then respond to Bowser's extremely slow and/or short ranged move - much like one can block Fox's Illusion option before reacting to the Firefox, but much, much easier.

Unless/until they're made significantly faster or given some other utility, usmash, and Fsmash will remain completely useless, and Klaw will remain extremely niche.

Despite all this, I should stress that Bowser isn't actually a terrible character right now balancewise, and can totally win every (or almost every) matchup. He could stand to be better, but my primary concern is with his design, not necessarily just his balance. Playing as, or against Bowser right now just isn't nearly as much fun as it could be with relatively minor, reasonable changes.

I've also edited this post about 7 times since posting, pls refresh page before quoting.

Heh, I should compile all my bowser-related thoughts into a novel-length memoir. "What are the Odds? The Inside Story of a Bowser Main"

it'll sell millions

Yeah, I can at least understand where you're coming from with all that, Koopa Klaw is definitely not all that good, I just defer on it being not worth it at all in it's current iteration.
Only thing I'd rather clarify is what I mean by setting up, I suppose it's generally used in different context for fighting games, so my b.
I'm usually talking about spacing setups rather than frame setups (Bowser having frame setups lol). Platforms and cornering are the most basic examples, which as you mentioned it can be difficult for Bowser to put himself in the right place for these things to happen (I know you're aware of wavelanding and crouching from run). Dashing away is another example that Bowser has trouble pulling off because of slow dash speed, despite decent run speed and pretty good pokes available to him as needed out of dash/run.
I still don't know if I'm explaining this well, but a good example for Bowser is, if you can bait out just a little semi-noncommittal WD forward->grab and you call it with a dash/WD back, suddenly a niche move like ftilt finds it's niche, and creative play with regards to that move starts to stem from setting your opponent up to play into a punish situation with flexible decisions instead of the punish itself (although it's rarely so black and white), which imo is really interesting. It also happens with more useful moves like fair. Say you're, again, dashing away, but are going to be overtaken, and DD grab/DA or bair isn't going to keep you safe, you could RAR fair instead; it's specifically because of it's strong properties that you'd want to jump through a few hoops to use it in this situation. The problem is that Bowser is so damn slow on dash startup, something as simple as dashing back usually isn't even an option because it gets grabbed too easily out of the DD game.

Also side note @ fair not being that good, I guess I probably was underselling it, but I still doubt many other characters would appreciate it's overall lag. For example, I'd be willing to bet Marth getting his fair replaced with Bowser's fair would not be an appreciable buff at all.

That's probably all I have to say for now.

 

[Lizalfos]

All these Bowser posts are too long. All I know is that I shoot lasers at him until he aproaches and then he dies.

 

[Player -0]

You do, at least until you feel the ground shake under the mighty power of Bowser's crawl.

Bowser opening his mouth during his crawl is too kawaiii.

 

[Frost | Odds]

I'm usually talking about spacing setups rather than frame setups ...I still don't know if I'm explaining this well, but a good example for Bowser is, if you can bait out just a little semi-noncommittal WD forward->grab and you call it with a dash/WD back, suddenly a niche move like ftilt finds it's niche

I understand where you're trying to go, but in reality it's not quite that simple. In the specific scenario you're suggesting, ftilt is actually far too slow to punish literally *any* character's attempt at WD in -> grab. Ftilt's current usage is mostly limited to tech chasing and walling semi- to fast-falling opponents when they're already cornered near an edge. In this scenario and most others, the Bowser player is much better off using jab1 into one of its many possible followups.

Whiff punishment is a great niche, but it only actually works for moves that are sufficiently fast to do so, or against moves that are themselves very laggy. Bowser's upB, for example, is a great whiff punishment move because of the iframes and its speed.

and creative play with regards to that move starts to stem from setting your opponent up to play into a punish situation with flexible decisions instead of the punish itself (although it's rarely so black and white), which imo is really interesting.

Agreed in theory. In reality, it doesn't often work out quite so neatly except in matchups where Bowser didn't really need the help. In pretty much every situation, dash attack, dash grab, dtilt, jab, or fair will end up being a superior choice.

Also side note @ fair not being that good, I guess I probably was underselling it, but I still doubt many other characters would appreciate it's overall lag. For example, I'd be willing to bet Marth getting his fair replaced with Bowser's fair would not be an appreciable buff at all.

Marth getting a mid-stage aerial kill option that's already at his preferred spacing, and which can still set up for Ken combos, would probably singlehandedly catapult him to his own tier above Fox.

Also,

I appear to be addicted to adverbs.

 

[Lizalfos]

You do, at least until you feel the ground shake under the mighty power of Bowser's crawl.

Bowser opening his mouth during his crawl is too kawaiii.

OH NO, BOWSER IS APROACHING. HE IS UNSTOPPABLE, WHICH ONE OF MY FRAME 1 UN-CCable MOVES SHOULD I USE?

 

[PootisKonga]

OH NO, BOWSER IS APROACHING. HE IS UNSTOPPABLE, WHICH ONE OF MY FRAME 1 UN-CCable MOVES SHOULD I USE?

Because you'll totally be able to shine a competent Bowser from above (otherwise we Dtilt) with that pitiful sized hitbox

 

[Soft Serve]

@PMS | Leafeon
new tag

Kreygasm

 

[Lizalfos]

Because you'll totally be able to shine a competent Bowser from above (otherwise we Dtilt) with that pitiful sized hitbox

Just joking I top platform camp against garbo-teir characters.

 

[PlateProp]

I demand that you educate me.

Educate you on using an lgp?

 

[Lizalfos]

Educate you on using an lgp?

Yeah I don't know what that is aside for a meeting I have with my guidance counselor or the first result on google. http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interior_gateway_protocol I dislike acronyms, but I suppose Squirtles have plenty of terrible ones.