Project M Social Thread

[phurgawtin]

as far as stage selection goes, i'm really happy that the "3 platforms in a triangle" theme isn't the only damn tourney-legal platform pattern.

 

[hotdogturtle]

Is that even possible? I recall there being a thread about that a while back, but I don't remember how much progress was made.

Sure it's possible, but I think that Event matches are outside of the realm of interest of the PMBR.

Can we let the PMBR focus on demo2/ the game as a whole being released "on time" rather than worrying about 1player modes like SSE and Event Matches that have nothing to do with competitive melee-like play? (which more or less the aim of the project iirc) >.>

I know you're just asking a question, and it's nothing against you personally at all, but seriously: a majority of people will be playing this game for the versus mode- not to play break the targets or home run contest with melee physics. T~T

I think BTT and HRC are gonna be legit when Project M is finished. Or at least HRC.

 

[I R MarF]

Ph00tbag knows whats up. If you haven't read some of the ideas he's brought up in his post, do yourself a favor and read up.

That's it. That's all Lucas needs, and he retains all of the really neat, nuanced, natural-feeling and really unique options that he had to begin with. Now, though, Lucas has been turned into some kind of Frankenstein's Monster of a character. Changes are made aimlessly, as if the people in charge of the character are just throwing darts at a bunch of post-it notes, and hoping this causes the character to cohere into something meaningful. Why does Lucas now have Guile's Flash Kick? I really wish I knew. All I can say is, Lucas was really cool in Demo 1, and could have had a lot of potential with one tweak. Now he's not cool, and I don't even want to think about his potential.

Holy smokes, I could not agree more. Demo 1 characters actually felt like they had coherent structure in their design. I think everyone kind of wrote off Lucas, Sonic, and Snake simply because they had weaknesses and took effort to play effectively... but everyone forgets that almost every other viable characters in Melee requires devotion to play effectively and their own weaknesses to overcome.

Now the design mentality seems to be geared towards addressing every flaw in a character and making sure those flaws are negated. Instead, why not enhance the strong qualities and leave/adjust the bad ones so they have a counterbalances? Obviously I am not saying certain weaknesses aren't piercing to a character and shouldn't be addressed, but having weaknesses is GOOD design because it makes them balanced and interesting for the playerbase to explore while still being viable but not broken and stupid.

I also can't believe what I'm reading about Lucas. "What the--?" is all I have to say. The only change I actually liked were uair changes. And Lucas has zoning problems? Thats something the player will have to work around to apply a potentially diverse close range game; one that DJC'ers are very much capable of.

 

[Shell]

ph00tbag, I think your analysis is a bit off on Lucas. I am busy currently but I will offer a full retort to your post later this evening. Cheers.

EDIT: ph00t, have you yourself played the latest testbed Lucas build yourself (Feb 2012), or are you just going off of watching people play various builds of him?

 

[Mattnumbers]

I see many things wrong with Phoot's writeup on Lucas based off of playing him in Demo 1 and playing him earlier this month. I'll wait till after SHeLL's post and just add anything I think he missed though since I don't want to ninja him or anything and I'm sure he knows more about the character than I do, having helped in designing him and all.

 

[Strong Badam]

I'm sorry, but I had to stop taking you seriously there.
85 frames is a second and a half.
Peach can pull, throw, and pull a turnip in this timeframe.

I'm pretty sure she can't.

 

[ph00tbag]

ph00tbag, I think your analysis is a bit off on Lucas. I am busy currently but I will offer a full retort to your post later this evening. Cheers.

EDIT: ph00t, have you yourself played the latest testbed Lucas build yourself (Feb 2012), or are you just going off of watching people play various builds of him?

Not as of February, no.

 

[krackizwak]

I think everyone needs to cool it down a bit, we got a little more then a month before the next demo comes out. Then we can test some of the characters a give better feedback. Things may seem grim now, but we are looking at the game through tinted glass here, not everyone in the backroom is gonna play these characters at top level. That's going to distort how we see certain characters.

So lets all relax and let them do what they do, at least until the demo comes out. Then we'll have something to really complain about

 

[9Kplus1]

For the record, Lucas is pretty easy to pick up. He's likely even more of a *******-*******-***bandit at higher levels.

edit: can't wait for shell to prove me wrong

 

[Deleted member]

Hey Umbreon, would you (or Kiri, for that matter) mind elaborating on why the current Ike can't do anything that's "really threatening"? Spaced FAirs/NAirs seem hard to get around in theory, the jab is a good get-off move, and QD edgeguards (which you've already pointed out) seem solid. I could also see B-reversal QD's and wavedashing out of QD to be good for mixing up grounded approaches, but I haven't played Ike so I can't be sure.

ike basically has no ground game and no air to ground game. the end result is a character that can move around fast that you can basically ignore or just attack his attacks with most characters as long as you don't get hit by an aerial. this is ALARMINGLY easy. keep in mind that most characters can already exploit marth's landing lag and that ike's is much, much worse. spaced fairs/nairs just get you ***** on landing lag because ike has no air to ground game, and in a lot of ways attempting to space aerials is the worst thing he can do against anyone thats been playing smash longer than 3 weeks.

ike can do QD into jabs and grab but his throws are useless. 100% useless. so there's really no reason to care about anything ike does because you can just block it. he can't set up juggles because all of his aerials are strong hits. he can't set up combos because he has no ground game. he can't stop stupid macro strategies like platform camping, dashdance camping, opponent shield abuse, because he doesn't have anything threatening to stop it with. idk he just doesn't have anything really. i guess he can edge guard if the opponent doesn't recover low? ike is really, really bad.

i played kiri for like half an hour last night mostly just 4 stocking him over and over, and half an hour in he tells me that ike sucks and he wishes the character was better, and i agree with him entirely. it's pretty clear that kiri himself understands the game at least a good bit better than our matches were suggesting, but how do you beat someone who can largely ignore your attacks? the character doesn't even have a small flaw, or just one fatal flaw. he has multiple critical weaknesses that can't even be fixed with multiple changes.

 

[genkaku]

barring starting from scratch, what would you do to make ike playable, umbreon?

 

[Deleted member]

barring starting from scratch, what would you do to make ike playable, umbreon?

start with a good upthrow and uptilt combos. ike's combos are guaranteed to be limited because all of his air moves are high knockback, so you could at least make it so like upthrow > uptilt > something combos at low and mid-low%. that way ike can realistically do QD > jab > grab > combos or something. anything along those lines will give ike some kind of ground game. a decent combo starter dtilt would be nice too so you can have an option out of a crouch besides reflex-tester style CC grabs.

as for fixing ike's air to ground game....good luck. you guys did it with bowser to some extent but...yeah idk. just good luck cause i got nothing.

 

[Shell]

As promised, a more detailed response to ph00tbag's post on Lucas. If you don't care about Lucas feel free to ignore this wall of textplanation.

The frame 8 hitbox on uair doesn't KO and can be SDI'd, making the frame 11 KO hitbox just as hard to hit with consistently as Ness's bair, if not harder. Neither Peach's bair or nair have near the KO capacity as Ness's bair. They're edgeguard set-ups.

As far as what I see wrong with Lucas, he used to have trouble approaching, comboing and KOing. But, he's fast on the ground, with a pretty quick projectile, giving him decent oki, and he has one of the best edgeguards in the game, meaning he doesn't really need combos or KOs anyway. But he doesn't have good zoning, or a good way to close the gap. The fixes made were thus: make PK Freeze land cancelable, and allow Lucas to retain his forward momentum during it. Grounded PK Freeze fires upward at about a thirty degree angle. PSI magnet now causes Lucas to advance forward very quickly, eating through any energy projectile in his path, and ending in an attack with buffed damage and knockback. Jab has more range, uair has a high base knockback, and a low knockback growth.

There's no direction to these buffs. The PK Freeze buffs apply to a zoning character, which I've already established that Lucas is not. He can use aerial PK Freeze to create approach openings, but it works better when used in tandem with grounded PK freeze to control both the ground and the air to force the opponent to try to force his way through it by attacking blindly. Psi Magnet was just absurd, and made no sense as a move. To my knowledge, it still hasn't been reverted, which is just silly. The uair sought to make Lucas combo better. Dair was also changed, although all it did was remove a pressure mix-up.

I realized this character was broken after G6, when Twitch started messing around with Lucas, and the only way other characters could even fight him was to bust through PK freeze with an aerial at full speed, and surrender all of the positioning and game time that that takes up. All it took was setting up a good spacing, and you could punish any character's approach. After that, you just combo the hell out of them, then knock them offstage, and edgeguard with PK Thunder. This character was perfect, and that's not a good thing. A month later, a Lucas trashed everyone at some PMBR tournament, presumably using a similar strategy to this, albeit even more nuanced.

So a couple nerfs were added. Lucas's PK Thunder 1 was shortened to pretty much only make it useful for recovering, but PKT2 was also shortened, so it wasn't even really worth it to use that, making rope snake the only viable recovery Lucas had. So to recap, we now have a character that has ridiculous onstage space control, incredible pressure, and protracted, damaging combos. The only problem now is that he can't KO or edgeguard, and he can't recover.

So now a buff is given to solve the KO problem. A new bair. It does absurd damage (therefore absurd blockstun), absurd knockback, and has absurd range. I shouldn't have to break down why this move is just... nonsensical. Just watch any stream with Lucas. He's spammy, lacks nuance, and just doesn't really change his gameplan up much. Most of it is PK Freeze and bair, with a couple uair combos thrown in.

For some context, I spent a lot of time with Lucas around the time Demo 1 came out. I recognized that he wasn't up to par, but I felt that with some dedication, a game plan could at least be figured out. And I figured out some really, really cool things. Fair was an incredible poke, that could be thrown into block strings safely. It also combo'd if DI'd incorrectly. PSI Magnet and ftilt could semi-spike, setting up for really easy edgeguards. Dair could be mixed into pressure strings to punish jumping out of shield. PK Thunder 1 was one of the safest edgeguards in the game. Most importantly, nair chewed through spot dodges, and had short enough cooldown that Lucas could follow rolls with mix-ups afterwards. I found a lot of really neat ways to pressure opponents once I got them locked down. The only problem was that locking them down usually required a pretty egregious error on their part. But then I looked at Lucas's hitboxes and realized why: nair's hitbox doesn't even cover up his limbs. The reason he gets swatted out of so many jump-ins is because he's totally exposed in his only good jump-in move. Around this time, Yeroc asked me for a write-up on Lucas. I gave him two answers. One of them, I'm not so fond of, to the point where I don't think it bears repeating. The one I'm most fond of is this: Make nair bigger.

That's it. That's all Lucas needs, and he retains all of the really neat, nuanced, natural-feeling and really unique options that he had to begin with. Now, though, Lucas has been turned into some kind of Frankenstein's Monster of a character. Changes are made aimlessly, as if the people in charge of the character are just throwing darts at a bunch of post-it notes, and hoping this causes the character to cohere into something meaningful. Why does Lucas now have Guile's Flash Kick? I really wish I knew. All I can say is, Lucas was really cool in Demo 1, and could have had a lot of potential with one tweak. Now he's not cool, and I don't even want to think about his potential.

Our standards of balance have come a ways since Demo 1. In particular, after Genesis 2 we realized that we weren't really creating the type of characters that have that certain raw, threatening power and depth of options that melee tops / high characters command. Lucas was no exception to this, and in fact, I'd say he was one of the worst of the newcomers.

As you yourself say, he had trouble approaching, comboing, and KOing... essentially he was mediocre at much of the onstage meat and potatoes of Smash itself.

Yes, he was decent offstage, but not really in the ways that we wanted to promote. If he avoided getting gimped then PKT2 traveled a long distance while being invincible for a good portion of that distance. As for edgeguarding we wanted to promote a more active edgeguarding game rather than sending out a hyper-safe, high BKB controllable projectile which would at least trade favorably with Up-Bs, wrecking some characters with little risk or effort.

Back to the onstage game... You say that a larger Nair would have fixed all of his problems. Even with larger hitboxes, though, the move is still multi-hit and centered on his hip, meaning that every 2-3 out of 5 frames (iirc) he still had no hitboxes out at all. Therefore it just isn't really set up to be a staple, reliable approach move.

But, for the sake of theory, let's say we went against normal smash coding and made the multihit stay out for every frame but refresh on hit. Even with this single approach option that wouldn't fix his issues with comboing and killing.

Good DI destroyed Lucas, frankly. Once his attacks were properly DI'd he quickly lost the ability to follow them up with anything meaningful. Additionally, Specks posted a video demonstrating how thoroughly all of his throw follow-ups could be, upon reaction, easily DI'd out of.

His killers had few reliable setups, and none that were available in the middle of a combo. Yes, FH AC Dair -> F-smash was usable, Sweetspot'd Bair bounce -> Smash attack was possible.

You bring up that he had a good projectile spam and edgeguarding game, but I don't agree that that exempts him from some degree of approach power, combos, or kill setups, traits which all of the best Melee characters share. Look at peach, while she, too, has a long range recovery and a projectile which can be used liberally on stage and as an edgeguarding tool she also has a useful throw game, combos (esp. vs FFers), the ability to approach and apply crazy pressure with float canceling.

So we wanted to beef up Lucas's options a bit. For every newcomer we try to establish some niche, a unique gameplay goal.

I dunno about you, but for me as a Lucas player one of the most satisfying feelings in smash is landing dat U-smash. An idea was to try to create a cohesive game that fed into landing smash KOs. He didn't have any high KB aerial attacks, so the plan was to work with his meteors to allow him to bring higher-percent opponents back down to the stage where he could tech chase or directly set up a smash KO.

DJC Uair, D-tilt, Dair bounce, grounded magnet, Nair, all set up for smash KOs.

Fair has been edited to be reliable approach tool and combo starter, as has Dash Attack.

At the same time we wanted to try using the magnet as a novel approach mixup tool. And yes, the magnet's range and speed were both nerfed significantly after that tournament you mentioned, and may yet be nerfed further. A lot of times when designing a concept character you push the concept a bit too far before scaling it back against a few more conventional options.

So why the new moves? For u-tilt, many playtesters disliked the invisible hitboxes that sakurai added to give the move any horizontal coverage, and if you look closely the u-tilt animation doesn't make a lot of physical sense. The flash kick was an attempt to add real horizontal coverage to the move in place of invisible hitboxes. It also fit in thematically with his new Dair.

Why replace Dair? This is another attack that many players disliked, possibly due to the game-slowing, largely disjointed multi-hits with wide AC window, which polarized some matchups. The flash kick dair was developed as a sort of forward-spinning reimagining of the the Bair, more useful in the heat of combos as it reaches infront and slightly above him. Additionally this dair, faster than bair and single hit vs. the old dair, became much more useful with his DJC game.

With this Dair, Bair was essentially obsolete. As I mentioned before we must often scale back the intensity of the concept, and here that ment giving him at least one aerial killer. It hits frames 20 & 21 with a lower angle. This means that it's highly dependent on horizontal proximity to the ledge and DI. IIRC Mario can survive Bair around 100% from the middle of FD and recover without using his Up-B if he DIs properly. Yes, it's very strong vs. shields, but most characters are capable of beating a SH'd Bair with a FH'd Dair of some kind. Alternatively, DD the Bair, bait it and it has 14 frames of L-canceled landing lag, IIRC. I don't really see spamming bair as one of his stronger strategies against a versed opponent but I will keep an eye on it.

Since whatever build you played PKT2 has been returned to a reasonable length and given the ability to DI / FF sooner out of the ending.

As for Side-B it was originally a crutch to support his total lack of approach game. Since we've now fleshed out his approach tools this is no longer (as?) necessary, and we will be toning down Side-b's general spammyness significantly.

I've probably missed some things but in conclusion it sounds like you were happy playing as this character which lacked any real cohesive offensive meat and instead relied upon his long distance recovery, projectile spam and EZ edgeguarding.

We had subjectively decided that we wanted something with at least a bit better offensive flow. While you can disagree with this subjective stance on whether an offensive character or a defensive one is more interesting to play as / against / watch, I do not think you can disagree with the notion that his faults ran far deeper than the size of his nair hitbox.

I know it's been hard to get an accurate picture of Lucas development since we've been trying to keep relatively quiet until we got something that worked well. But I think with our most recent testbed build we've hit something fast and fun, and with a bit more polishing up you'll see a very cohesive character.

EDIT: Lemme know if I missed anything, MattNumbers.

 

[Vigilante]

I used to hate Lucas for being a n00b canon in the past, but later builds pretty much rectified most of thes eissues and made him requie more precision. As for how weak Lucas was... I think Shell explained it better than I ever could.

Also I'm curious to know how you guys in general feel about Lucario. I'd like to do some final touchups on him if they are needed (there's no guarantee I'll even touch anything at this point; I'm just checking his PSA data to see if everything makes sense), and I figure I should at least listen to your oppinions.

 

[ValTroX]

My only real beef agaist Lucas was the lack of lenght/speed in pkt2. I mean, Ness has as good, if not better stage game than the current Lucas, and you guys gave him Lucas's previous pkt2 range and gave his pkt1 speed. I can agree that Lucas's pkt1 is slower than Ness's, since it hits characters and keeps going, and it was also abusive on offstage enemies if used correctly(I gimped the hell out of everybody with it).

So, giving him better aerials is ok, he has a great wd, but effectiveness from magnet has been toned down and I heard(again heard, hence, rumors) that zap jumping is no longer possible, so even worst recovery for a character which already had a bad recovery.

All I ask of you guys:
1) St least B+ stats to Lucas's pkt, with the multi-hit pkt2 and pass through characters pkt1
2) Keep SideB slowed down as SHeLL said, but make his grounded sideb shoot straight, It's weird shooting with an upward angle, and I don't see any use in it.
3) Keep his current aerials.

Edit: Off with abortion stick please xD

 

[Shell]

Lucas's recovery is far from bad.

PKT1 still goes through opponents, and the PKT2 distance now is pretty solid.

He can use his magnet to stall a bit, and possibly home in on edgeguarders.

His tether recovery has a small but mildly disjointed weak hit on frame 1, making it harder to gimp him when he's in tether range. Additionally, compared to demo 1 you can no longer hog tether attempts, buffing this option.

He can still be gimped with a chain of aerials, or hit far enough that he can be intercepted before PKT2, or hit with an aerial that outranges the tether's hitbox, but overall he has a fun recovery with a bunch of options.

The is-it-dead stick poke jab 1 has been replaced with a simple zap jab per player request.

 

[Deleted member]

i thought lucario was cool. i expected him to be gimmicky but his combos are basically the same as combos on any other character, they just happen faster (but you can still escape/DI if you try as far as i can tell). his ground speed is fast in that it keeps you honest in a neutral position but it felt just about right. i might have to see more of him than from only vanguard but he seemed fine as is.

everyone i talked to absolutely hated lucas. he seemed okay to me.

i still think ZSS is ****ing annoying.

i'm pretty sure the lyn costume is the best thing ever. i made lyn look way better than marth lol.

metaknight is....hilariously unfinished, but also not too bad for now. FOR NOW. I know how you ****ers work.

squirtle looks much improved. still potent, but fun to interact with, both as and against.

tournament + olimar, diddy, squirtle, climbers banned = BEST TOURNAMENT EVER.

 

[leelue]

I actually used the grounded angled pk freeze to good effect the other day valtrox. I would be upset if it was gone since that would make yet another grounded projectile significantly worse than the aerial ounterpart.

You guys know how much I love my trade-offs.

Hell, I wish more projectiles would get this treatment (luigi, I'm lookin at you.)

 

[Shadic]

metaknight is....hilariously unfinished, but also not too bad for now. FOR NOW. I know how you ****ers work.

squirtle looks much improved. still potent, but fun to interact with, both as and against.

I like how you go from saying "not too bad for now, but I know how you work" to immediately saying Squirtle works better now. <3

 

[Magus420]

QD attack/grab, f-tilt, u-tilt, and jab are all the ground game you need really. The distance uncharged QD attack can cover while also keeping it too fast to react to is pretty good and about a roll's distance. Kiri doesn't use this nearly as much as he should from what I've seen, and is probably the best attack he has. It also pops them up, which is a bad place to be for many characters due to his huge horizontal ranged u-air. His u-air is like the 2nd strongest u-air in the game behind Bowser's btw as long as you're not hitting with the initial hitbox, which even then is still pretty strong. I have no idea why you think it's weak.


He has guaranteed combos off a grab on every character in the game at most percents. His throws are very very far from useless.

F-Throw: Mid and floaty characters QD RAR b-air any DI but down&away from 0 to around 100, and QD attack on down&away DI from 0 to mid percents. Releases on frame 9 even on heavyweights, so down&away DI where you can only QD attack doesn't happen much, and semi-FFers will often be able to be comboed (down&away is needed for semi-FFers to avoid getting hit).

D-Throw: Floaties from 0 QD attack, and mid chars upper percents QD attack. This throw is easily DI'd and not as rewarding compared to f/u-throw on stage. If used at the edge though you can dropzone f-air not FFers if they DI low to not get b-aired and they can't really avoid it.

U-Throw: Semi-FFers u-tilt or u-air low %, u-air until mid-upper. FFers CG from 0-50ish; u-tilt on all but away DI from 0; f-smash no/slight DI at mid; u-air to aerial at mid on any DI; b/f-air any DI from lower-mid until a long time.

 

[leelue]

Damn. Get ***** by magus.
That's why I sent you those 15 crisp dollars.

Magus, do you know an Eli from New york? He plays CF and DK mostly. He seems to remember you.

 

[Deleted member]

I mean, it seems like every ****ing character can CG fox/falco. Is this mandatory? There's more consistency at characters being able to **** fox/falco on FD than pretty much any other competitive aspect. I appreciate you saying "rebuttal, because of evidence X Y and Z" but I'd have to see it in practice. This game is unfamiliar to me so I prefer to test things to understand them. Maybe I just outplay all the ike players and that's why I keep 4 stocking them, despite that they can go random with no character experience and do better by mashing buttons with their faces?

edit: james while we're making random assertions, maybe you should come to the next anything so i can make a combo video out of you on the stream.

 

[leelue]

Umbreon, It's too early in the morning to be burnin people so dirtily.

(I feel like I'm the thread hype-man now)

 

[Vigilante]

i thought lucario was cool. i expected him to be gimmicky but his combos are basically the same as combos on any other character, they just happen faster (but you can still escape/DI if you try as far as i can tell). his ground speed is fast in that it keeps you honest in a neutral position but it felt just about right. i might have to see more of him than from only vanguard but he seemed fine as is.

Yeah, most poeple are apprehensive at first and then when they fight / use him a few times, their oppinions change drastically for the best. I personally feel he's close to complete and may only require minor tweaks if any at all. Still, nothing is ever certain in development and new gameplay feedback is always sought.

Lucario can indeed combo a lot quickly but since his damage input per attack is low, it kind of balances out. Youc an generally DI out of his comboes unless the Lucario player's spacing is very good and his execution is spot on. Like, it's actually possible to Side B a relatively high percentage foe after F-air if you can do the input on the exact frame where it is possible to cancel into a special. Of course, a one frame window is hard to pull off. The higher the foes' percentage, the harder it is to follow up and since Lucario often depends on comboes to kill, you don't really want to drag it on too much.

I guess his more obvious weakness though is his very poor approach. Although you should know how to take advantage of dash-dance, wavedashing and moonwalking. I tend to play a wait and see tactic until I find an opening and then I try to not let up; although I've also more straightforward ones like Neko.

 

[I R MarF]

Our standards of balance have come a ways since Demo 1. In particular, after Genesis 2 we realized that we weren't really creating the type of characters that have that certain raw, threatening power and depth of options that melee tops / high characters command. Lucas was no exception to this, and in fact, I'd say he was one of the worst of the newcomers.

While top and high tier characters have great options... apparent counterbalances also exist in their game. This is something I brought up, and keep bringing up, because "make everything good" is not the correct route. What is SHOULD be, is a pro and con design.

Demo 1 characters actually followed that route. Snake had strong stage control, poor close range options and gimpable recovery. Sonic had amazing manueverability and recovery, but poor KO power. Lucas was more flawed than the other two, I admit, but had the potential of a powerful close and mid range game thanks to being a DJC'er, but still having a "meh" recovery and limited approach options (which would be offset by a projectile and zair)

These aforementioned three felt close to Melee characters in design because they had structure: they capitalized off their strengths to work around their weaknesses. Of course, I understand that they all needed slight adjustments, but addressing every single flaw in these character as well as every flaw in all the other P:M characters is thoughtless.

 

[jalued]

While top and high tier characters have great options... apparent counterbalances also exist in their game. This is something I brought up, and keep bringing up, because "make everything good" is not the correct route. What is SHOULD be, is a pro and con design.

Demo 1 characters actually followed that route. Snake had strong stage control, poor close range options and gimpable recovery. Sonic had amazing manueverability and recovery, but poor KO power. Lucas was more flawed than the other two, I admit, but had the potential of a powerful close and mid range game thanks to being a DJC'er, but still having a "meh" recovery and limited approach options (which would be offset by a projectile and zair)

These aforementioned three felt close to Melee characters in design because they had structure: they capitalized off their strengths to work around their weaknesses. Of course, I understand that they all needed slight adjustments, but addressing every single flaw in these character as well as every flaw in all the other P:M characters is thoughtless.

Fox doesnt really fit into this standard, especially considering Nintendo would have fully understand how good he was going to be. He has high kill power, good recovery and amazing stage control. His only problem is his ability to be comboed.

Jigglypuff also doesnt fit into your logic:

good kill power
great edgeguarding
very hard to combo her
Great recovery
good range and monoverability
light

PM has 40 character, which is a massive cast. Its inevitable that there will be some characters who break the current trend of the game and don't have any obvious weaknesses. But given metagame advances, i'm sure there will be problems for them all.

I do however feel that some character's recoveries are slightly too good (lucario and wario for example), that unbalances the strength/recovery/speed triangle and slightly muddies the gameplay.

Note: I hope that lucario's wallcling out of upB has been removed, that sort of extra recovery boost is completely unnecessary

 

[I R MarF]

First of all, you listed two top tier characters. Them being top tier tells us that they stand above all the other characters in the game due to some form of brokeness. Telling me they "don't really fit" is like saying cows moo because we already know that their weaknesses are not 1:1 with their strengths which is what makes them so good.

However, whats important is how their weaknesses affect how they are played. I'll explain this below. Just keep in mind that I'm not trying to explain that Fox and Jiggs are balanced, just how their weaknesses are substantial.

Fox doesnt really fit into this standard, especially considering Nintendo would have fully understand how good he was going to be. He has high kill power, good recovery and amazing stage control. His only problem is his ability to be comboed.

Being combo'd is still a substantial weakness because it means that Fox can get punished hard. Thats why players have to be constantly mobile and unpredictable with Fox making him technically demanding at high level and maybe even mid level play. Fox is also the best character in the game, so I'll say it again, he has a disproportionate amount of options to his weaknesses... but he still suffices as an example because his major weaknesses FACTOR INTO HIS PLAYSTYLE.

I cannot stress the importance of that last sentence. Its really the same exact idea as Snake having a poor close range game so he must emphasize his stage control; Fox has a high vulnerability to chain grabs, combos, and gimps, so he must emphasize his high speed and KO power. Obviously he is top tier so he is kinda broken, but at least he must consider his weaknesses whereas I feel many new P:M characters do not.

Jigglypuff also doesnt fit into your logic:

good kill power
great edgeguarding
very hard to combo her
Great recovery
good range and monoverability
light

First of all, being light is a weakness, and being the lightest character in the game is a significant weakness. While it makes her hard to combo, the main contributing factor to that strength is her air mobility, but overall, being easy to KO vertically is a huge con. Again, this is something that puff players have to consider much like any other major weakness for another character.

The proper response to being light is to adopt a very safe playstyle that abuses Jigglypuff's aerial mobility. Unless the player attempts a rest, Jiggs players can be very safe at the price of adopting linearity (not even sure if thats a word, but I'm using it). She is linear because you should know that Puff's gameplan is to weave and WoP whenever she is airborne.

And I'll say it again like I did for Fox and the beginning of this post... Jiggs is top, so of course she has more pros than cons.

PM has 40 character, which is a massive cast. Its inevitable that there will be some characters who break the current trend of the game and don't have any obvious weaknesses. But given metagame advances, i'm sure there will be problems for them all.

I do however feel that some character's recoveries are slightly too good (lucario and wario for example), that unbalances the strength/recovery/speed triangle and slightly muddies the gameplay.

Note: I hope that lucario's wallcling out of upB has been removed, that sort of extra recovery boost is completely unnecessary

Inevitability suggests that there is no control over the character development and their design. I'd agree that some characters being better than others simply because certain playstyles and advantages are overall superior to a others is inevitable... but there is no excuse to not give characters clear-cut counterbalances to their strengths.

And at least ones substantial enough to affect how a character should be played.

 

[standardtoaster]

Jalued, lucario cannot wallcling at all anymore.

 

[MonkUnit]

I'd actually really like to see how a team of 2 lucarios would work out. Perhaps some silly team combos could happen?

 

[I R MarF]

standardtoaster, MonkUnit, you two are in the P:M team, right?

Do you have a stance towards my criticisms and opinions with character design?

 

[MonkUnit]

I'm more focused on stages rather than characters, so I don't really have a stance on this character development conversation that's going on.

 

[Mono.]

Kiri doesn't use this nearly as much as he should from what I've seen, and is probably the best attack he has.

Yes I do. But anyway, my gripe with Ike isn't his ground game, it's his defenses (No good OoS option, god forbid if I don't powershield almost everything, retreating fair/jab isn't as reliable as people may think, etc), how much I need to make use of my quickdraw gimmick to at least try to compete, way too many unsafe and slow moves to compensate his spacing game, how much I need to rely on his surprise factor/mistakes to get around alot of matchups, no solid approach, wins being based around people not knowing the matchup and outplaying my opponents. There is not even a handful of characters I feel I have an advantage on/can go toe to toe with. He just feels incomplete with no truly solid tools outside of his predictable gimmick and not ready to go head on with the stronger characters.

 

[9Kplus1]

I never like to participate in discussions over the internet, let alone in this thread, but:

While top and high tier characters have great options... apparent counterbalances also exist in their game. This is something I brought up, and keep bringing up, because "make everything good" is not the correct route. What is SHOULD be, is a pro and con design.

No matter how severely one edits a character, the "pro and con" system will still exist; this is applicable to even the most broken of characters. For this reason, basing each character's design around a series of traits being "balanced" by a set of downfalls is, bluntly put, a bad idea. While our -- we, as Smashers -- opinions on what's important to have in a Melee-esque environment differ, we can at least come to a unanimous decision on which characters are vastly better than a chunk of the available cast. It's not very difficult for any player with a just amount of experience to recognize a good character. That having been said, it's even easier for one to point out the downfalls of said characters (their feebleness, if you will). It doesn't take 1/9001th of a brain to recognize that Fast Fallers are more easily comboed by most, if not the entire cast of characters; however, it takes just a bit of thought to realize that these shortcomings can be covered very well with the character's better assets.

Smash is a game of opportunity -- the recognition and optimization of. Does this mean that if one player covers their character's weaknesses better than the other player, that they'll be able to win? Implications based off of the "pro and con" system can be made in order to properly answer this question, but it ultimately boils down to how efficient each character is against another (assuming that both players are close to being on level ground, regarding their respective skill levels). Link is a great example of why the "pro and con" system isn't efficient in character design. Link, by canon, is a character riddled with a plethora of tools -- and his iterations in each Smash game shows this. In Smash Link has a solid projectile game, as well as a pretty good reach, thanks to the always-trustworthy Master Sword. As compensation for such (seemingly) already amazing tools, Link's physics and recovery can be largely exploited by any opposition, making him a "don't get hit" character, more often than not. This being the case, why has Link always been delegated to being garbage? He certainly has the tools to become a top threat -- but what's really keeping him back? Metagame development? I'm pretty sure that there have always been enough Link players to continuously feed Link's metagame, so it can grow at a similar rate to the top tier characters'. Could the players actually be the problem behind why Link is consistently a bad character? See: Skylar and Germ. Could it be the "pro and con" system keeping Link back? Well, many of the top tier characters can outpace, outmaneuver, and generally outclass Link in many aspects -- not due to their advantages and disadvantages, but rather due to their actual design. If Puff having a Sol Katti made sense in Smash, then I'm very sure that her "disadvantage" of being a frail little marshmallow would be even more negligible. This would call for nerfs in a particular area, which would result in a... urg, I'm getting a bit off-topic. Anyway, my point is that the utilization of "pro and con" system in character design can result in large imbalance among the entire cast.

While imbalance is abundant throughout and easily noticeable in the Smash series, this is a hack meant to severely tone down that imbalance, giving previously bad characters greater viability in the competitive environment, while still emulating a form greatly resembling that of Melee. With strong utilization of the "pros and cons" system, many characters would be at large disadvantage against the higher portion of the cast, due to having to work much harder in order to cover their obvious and easily exploitable weakness. Let it be known that while I, personally, and many others boast no problems with having a "Complete ****" tier in P:M, it's one of the goals of the devs to make every character viable. (Sure, yeah, one could argue that Pichu, for example, is viable at higher levels in Melee, but it's pretty bad to use player skill as an argument for character viability.)

These aforementioned three felt close to Melee characters in design because they had structure: they capitalized off their strengths to work around their weaknesses. Of course, I understand that they all needed slight adjustments, but addressing every single flaw in these character as well as every flaw in all the other P:M characters is thoughtless.

Lucas still has **** recovery, and still has to work for his KOs; Snake is still pretty gimpable; and Sonic still sucks at killing. I don't see how any of the characters you'd mentioned had "every single flaw" addressed.

 

[standardtoaster]

standardtoaster, MonkUnit, you two are in the P:M team, right?

Do you have a stance towards my criticisms and opinions with character design?

To be honest, I'm pretty okay with how things are at the moment. Things seem to be relatively okay so far.

 

[Vigilante]

Yeah, Lucario's Wall cling is removed, so there is no more risk of cheap suicide from Up B.

 

[jalued]

Yeah, Lucario's Wall cling is removed, so there is no more risk of cheap suicide from Up B.

that's good to hear. How is it edgeguarding wario btw? he seems to have a weird angle that makes it tricky to reach him, and his endlag seems short

 

[Vigilante]

I'm not sure whar you mean. You,re saying Up-B is efficient to edgeguarding Wario?

 

[I R MarF]

First off, good post 9kplus1.

I never like to participate in discussions over the internet, let alone in this thread, but:
No matter how severely one edits a character, the "pro and con" system will still exist; this is applicable to even the most broken of characters. For this reason, basing each character's design around a series of traits being "balanced" by a set of downfalls is, bluntly put, a bad idea.

I think you are misunderstanding my exact beliefs in regards to what makes an ideal pro con. I don't think characters have to be perfectly balanced and 1:1 between their pros and cons.

This is how I think the pro con should work:

1. A character's pros are specific, meaning that they aren't absolutely good at everything, however, the strengths that exist can be emphasized on to still be used to the player's advantage
2. A character's cons don't have to be a precise counter to their strengths, but should be substantial enough where they play a role into how to play the character effectively, and if misused, these cons could be taken advantage of by the opponent

IMO, following these 2 rules creates a character that has depth, structure, and all without ruining the playability of other characters. IMO, viability while preventing brokeness would be best attained with this kind of approach.

While our -- we, as Smashers -- opinions on what's important to have in a Melee-esque environment differ, we can at least come to a unanimous decision on which characters are vastly better than a chunk of the available cast. It's not very difficult for any player with a just amount of experience to recognize a good character. That having been said, it's even easier for one to point out the downfalls of said characters (their feebleness, if you will). It doesn't take 1/9001th of a brain to recognize that Fast Fallers are more easily comboed by most, if not the entire cast of characters; however, it takes just a bit of thought to realize that these shortcomings can be covered very well with the character's better assets.

Like I said, its the fact that those weaknesses are integral to their playstyle thats most important. The fact that a character can emphasize on their strengths to hide their weaknesses makes sense because it still requires some devotion from the player to try and understand their character and how to play them well. A character like Zelda doesn't make sense to me because instead of having to focus on her strong aspects to work past her weak ones, she can simply negate them.

Smash is a game of opportunity -- the recognition and optimization of. Does this mean that if one player covers their character's weaknesses better than the other player, that they'll be able to win? Implications based off of the "pro and con" system can be made in order to properly answer this question, but it ultimately boils down to how efficient each character is against another (assuming that both players are close to being on level ground, regarding their respective skill levels).

A character's ability to cloak their weakness via the route of emphasizing strengths would be subjective to the player's ability to do so. And while I agree that it does boil down to MU's, its not so much of a character's inability to cover than weaknesses than it is simply natural advantage.

For instance, In a 55:45 MU and 60:40 MU, the cause of the advantage and disadvantage is the fact that the character with the upperhand has strengths which magnify the opponents weakness. It normally wouldnt inhibit the disadvantaged character's ability to utilize their strengths, its simply they will have less forgiving mistakes.

A good example of what I am talking would be between Marth and Shiek, which is 60: 40 MU in Shiek's favor. Among Marth's natural weaknesses are the fact he is light enough to be combo'd at low percents, but heavy enough to be combo'd at high percents, he also has a recovery that, while good, relies heavily on being uninterrupted since he needs a horizontal momentum to milk distance from his side-b.

Shiek is able to easily take advantage of Marth's weaknesses due chain grabs, tilt combos, fair, and needles, but Marth still has the capability to outplay Shiek by emphasizing on the strengths of effective low percent killing options, higher mobility than Shiek due to a better DD, wavedash, and shffl, along with a naturally superior range.

Its when you get into the "on sale" and "free MUs" like 65:35 and worse which allows the character with the advantage to have both the ability to magnify weaknesses and inhibit a character's ability to use their strengths. This usually means one of the characters sucks.

Link is a great example of why the "pro and con" system isn't efficient in character design. Link, by canon, is a character riddled with a plethora of tools -- and his iterations in each Smash game shows this. In Smash Link has a solid projectile game, as well as a pretty good reach, thanks to the always-trustworthy Master Sword. As compensation for such (seemingly) already amazing tools, Link's physics and recovery can be largely exploited by any opposition, making him a "don't get hit" character, more often than not. This being the case, why has Link always been delegated to being garbage? He certainly has the tools to become a top threat -- but what's really keeping him back? Metagame development? I'm pretty sure that there have always been enough Link players to continuously feed Link's metagame, so it can grow at a similar rate to the top tier characters'. Could the players actually be the problem behind why Link is consistently a bad character? See: Skylar and Germ. Could it be the "pro and con" system keeping Link back? Well, many of the top tier characters can outpace, outmaneuver, and generally outclass Link in many aspects -- not due to their advantages and disadvantages, but rather due to their actual design. If Puff having a Sol Katti made sense in Smash, then I'm very sure that her "disadvantage" of being a frail little marshmallow would be even more negligible. This would call for nerfs in a particular area, which would result in a... urg, I'm getting a bit off-topic. Anyway, my point is that the utilization of "pro and con" system in character design can result in large imbalance among the entire cast.

The main problem with the point you are making is that Link is a bad character. The reason for this is his poor ability of capitalizing off his strengths.

Look at Captain Falcon, a character with poor defensive options, recovery options, and no projectile or disjointed hitboxes. Yet with high mobility he is able to capitalize and focus on his strengths to unlock his true potential.

If you consider that, then you can realize that Link's need for improvement lies within emphasizing and strengthening his best attributes so players can capitalize off them. This wouldn't mean giving Link a faster dash, high airspeed, and a WD as long as Luigi's, but rather strengthening his already present zoning game and decreasing attack start up so he can tap into his disjointed range. Link would still have the same mobility weaknesses while being able to control space to both bog an opponent's approach and make his own approach safe. This would keep Link's weaknesses but give him to the opportunity to use his strengths.

While imbalance is abundant throughout and easily noticeable in the Smash series, this is a hack meant to severely tone down that imbalance, giving previously bad characters greater viability in the competitive environment, while still emulating a form greatly resembling that of Melee. With strong utilization of the "pros and cons" system, many characters would be at large disadvantage against the higher portion of the cast, due to having to work much harder in order to cover their obvious and easily exploitable weakness. Let it be known that while I, personally, and many others boast no problems with having a "Complete ****" tier in P:M, it's one of the goals of the devs to make every character viable. (Sure, yeah, one could argue that Pichu, for example, is viable at higher levels in Melee, but it's pretty bad to use player skill as an argument for character viability.)

If every character plays by the same rules, you'll find that it'd be more balanced than just porting over the characters between Fox and Samus who do play by pro con and now play characters with absolutely no weakness to capitalize off of. It'd ruin those characters' playability since they'd be hard to use in the shadow of a character that has no substanial con to work past.

Pro con can be done right.

Lucas still has **** recovery, and still has to work for his KOs; Snake is still pretty gimpable; and Sonic still sucks at killing. I don't see how any of the characters you'd mentioned had "every single flaw" addressed.

I thought Sonic got improved KO power? And I guess its that Snake has a stronger close range game than stage control game is what kind of saddens me.

 

[UltiMario]

You know how Ike could be improved?

There was a hilariously old build where Ike was just getting started on- Shffl Fair and Nair beat practically everything.

Just go back to them beating everything again =p

 

[jalued]

I'm not sure whar you mean. You,re saying Up-B is efficient to edgeguarding Wario?

I'm more meaning his sideB, is it hard to outprioratise and space it?