Project M Social Thread

[ELI-mination]

I know the reasons why people may choose melee over P:M, but they simply don't apply to me. In my view P:M will always be way better than melee. And I was a high level melee player. So it's not like a skill level argument could ever convince me. Just in case anybody would be tempted to use one.

 

[bubbaking]

Just in case, you say.....

 

[B.W.]

I'm with you, Eli. I never played Melee at a high level, but I have been playing it with a competitive mind since 2004 and didn't stop playing it until Project: M Demo v2.0 was released.

As it is now it still doesn't feel very far off from Melee. A few things need to be tweaked here and there, but all-in-all the game feels great and knowing it's only going to improve from where it is just gets me more excited.

The way the cast is balanced is great, and the newer characters are made with that special PMBR flavor that still feels like it belongs in Melee with the exception of Lucario, but that's not even a bad thing.

 

[bubbaking]

Oh, we've got Lucario haters in here now, do we? <___________< Well, do we?

 

[GP&B]

but that's not even a bad thing.

Well, there's this.

 

[bubbaking]

Silence, man-horse! This is between me and that filthy, cheap ****.

#AmericanDad

 

[GP&B]

wat u say

 

[leelue]

Ninjad
Lowering the bar for humor again, are we?

 

[leafbarrett]

The way the cast is balanced is great, and the newer characters are made with that special PMBR flavor that still feels like it belongs in Melee with the exception of Lucario, but that's not even a bad thing.

He's right. Lucario really doesn't feel like a Melee character. And before you say a damn thing about haters, I main PM Lucario. ...Or at least, I'm trying to. My reflexes don't work fast enough half the time, and the other half, I'm still trying to overcome my muscle memory from my custom Lucario set.
On that note... *flail* GAAAAAAAAH why does Lucario fall so fast?!
Oh, also. I'm formally requesting that Aura Bomb's name be changed to Focus Blast. c:

 

[bubbaking]

It does usually miss........

 

[Comeback Kid]

I don't think the SDR developers really know what they're doing in designing their game. Knockback and character movement is outta control.

When they admitedly design joke characters and make Bowser as polarizing as possible, you know it isn't going to turn out well.

 

[bubbaking]

Wait, "admittedly design joke characters"? You mean take Melee's already accepted jokes (Pichu, G&W, etc.) and try to design them to be better or actually create joke chars?

 

[GP&B]

It sounds like deliberation. I know very little of the actual changes so I want to refrain from detailed comments at the very least.

 

[Gea]

Wait, "admittedly design joke characters"? You mean take Melee's already accepted jokes (Pichu, G&W, etc.) and try to design them to be better or actually create joke chars?

They (I think Ripple?) said something like, "We didn't know what to do with Pichu so we made him broken on purpose as a joke"

 

[Comeback Kid]

Wait, "admittedly design joke characters"? You mean take Melee's already accepted jokes (Pichu, G&W, etc.) and try to design them to be better or actually create joke chars?

Pichu is extremely overpowered purely as a joke because they couldn't think of what to do with the character.

Damn Gea got here first.

Characters in general have a hodge podge of changes without addressing their core problems.

 

[SFA Smiley]

Ugh, I remember having these arguments in the school playground. Gdubs is a legit character, he sucks but he's not a joke ;_;

Pichu was, but not Gdubs

 

[bubbaking]

But he wasn't even a character. At least Pichu was a joke character.

 

[JCaesar]

http://www.twitch.tv/vgbootcamp

Streaming some 2.5 preview. Might be doing teams the rest of the night.

 

[Sixth-Sense]

They (I think Ripple?) said something like, "We didn't know what to do with Pichu so we made him broken on purpose as a joke"

Oh god, your right, well yeah some characters feel really broken to me (mewtwo is way to fast) and pichu completely ****'s on pikachu now with those crazy buffs (especially foward B, it's like a 100% luigi misfire) they defiently have work to do, but like i said in the other post, they are really limited when it comes to changing things, and since there's practically NO ONE doing anything for melee (as in hacking and stuff) there also limited as to how much can they find out about something, i'm not johning for them, they really need to redo all of the low-tier characters because some like mewtwo and bowser seem like they have thier own tier

So far the most well handeled character in SDR seems to be samus, like they gave her what she was lacking in certain attacks and certain areas. They also have thier work cut out for them but like said PM is gonna end up being much much much much much much much better.

 

[Spoon~]

Whoops, i thought i was in the Project M thread.

 

[leafbarrett]

Nobody ever answered my question. Why does Lucario fall so fast? :<

 

[Life]

Because he's programmed to

 

[leafbarrett]

*sigh* Thank you, Dr. Sarcasm. Why did the PM team program him to fall so fast?

 

[Jonny Westside]

*sigh* Thank you, Dr. Sarcasm. Why did the PM team program him to fall so fast?

Because he is a Steel type.


gg

 

[Shadic]

Because he is a Steel type.

Yeah, basically.

He's fighting-steel. Why wouldn't he fall fast?

 

[Giygacoal]

Yeah! You'd have to be a total noob to not know that steel falls fast. Obviously.

Also, that isn't sarcasm. This is sarcasm.

 

[JOE!]

Bronzong is steel and levitates.

I think leaf meant why in terms of playstyle/design relevance.

 

[Kink-Link5]

Lucario falls fast? Seems pretty floaty to my recollection but I don't use the character very much and might just be thrown off by all his stuff that causes him to stop moving in the air.


Just looked it up, yeah I have no idea what Leaf is talking about, Lucario is even floatier than Marth and Ike (non FF).

 

[Warhawk]

I think melee SD is a really cool idea and has potential if they made reasonable buffs to characters like they did for G&W, Link, and Falcon but what they did for characters like Pichu and Bowser is just way too ridiculous and feels way out of place.

 

[Xebenkeck]

There seems to be this notion around that balance is easy to acheive................................

 

[Warhawk]

Its not but that's why with melee SD it should be slowly worked up to with changes that still keep the general character feel, not complete overhaul all at once. that makes it look like you put in some super cheat code when you play Pichu. Complete balance shouldn't even be what they're looking for, just enough to make every character able to compete within reason with each other.

 

[the melon!!!!!]

There seems to be this notion around that balance is easy to acheive................................

I come in here to see updates on P:M 2.5 and I see this gem. I want this post on a ****ing t-shirt NOW. XD

 

[Kink-Link5]

I think melee SD is a really cool idea and has potential if they made reasonable buffs to characters like they did for G&W, Link, and Falcon but what they did for characters like Pichu and Bowser is just way too ridiculous and feels way out of place.

Falcon doesn't seem to mind having a ridiculous and out-of-place design in the Melee environment.

What even defines what is in place and not? I'm sure there are plenty of players who would say something like Jigglypuff is ridiculous and out of place in Melee.

The matter isn't if something that is powerful "fits" into a defined notion of character design, but instead whether that character design fits into a notion of what is powerful. It's fine to have a varied cast, as long as they are all given equal opportunity and parallels in authentic character strengths. Balance by way of "Human error" or "low health" or "bad recovery" don't really address actual character problems in interacting with their opponent. Don't get me wrong, having a strong recovery and living long means you can afford to make mistakes and can minimalise character flaws, but those flaws are still going to exist no matter how long they live.

I mention the notion a lot, but there is an important difference between a Weakness and what I coin a "Weakness multiplier." Having bad priority is a weakness. Having low damage output is a weakness multiplier. Having slow start up is a weakness, this causing a lack of a combo breaker is a weakness multiplier. Being unsafe on block is a weakness, being gimped any time you get thrown off stage when you get shield grabbed is a weakness multiplier.

The point being, if your character, or, in a more meta sense, if your collection of hitboxes attributed to a collection of hurtboxes alongside that hurtbox's ability to navigate the stage and interact with your opponent, has no inherit weaknesses, they have nothing to multiply.

If your character has 100% safe options in every situation, no amount of low health or bad recovery or low stun meter or light weight or susceptibility to combos will matter. The character has no weaknesses, no matter how you paint it, because the character has no flaws in their interaction with the opponent.

Now, whether having blatant and abusable weaknesses in a character's design is a good thing or not is a matter of opinion, but I can say for myself that I'm not a fan of it. Not to say that every move needs to be 100% unstoppable, that would be even dumber; just that there should not be one single weakness nearly universal to a character with nothing that exists as a contrast to that weakness.

For instance, if a hypothetical character "P" had a universal weakness of "bad hurtbox coverage on his upper body," and only one situational move that serves in contrast to this trait, that character has a blatantly exploitable weakness. Anything the character does can be beaten just by hitting high to either trade or outright beat everything they do. Their single outlying move can easily be dismissed in the meta, because it just means you have to look out for two easily telegraphed attacking options. Even though P was given a tool to combat his weakness, it doesn't really do much for the character as a whole because that tool can be circumvented without issue.

Here is where I feel good design vs bad design comes about. How do we solve the problems P has? Well he is easily punished for his low hitting moves and is weak to 50/50 mixups, so we could make him have really high health- that way he can afford to be hit more and hopefully put in work to make up the deficit. We can also make P hit like a truck, so each hit takes out a healthy fifth of the opponent's health bar. I see this as an example of bad balance and bad design choice. This does not address any issue P has as a character, and only serves to make his strong matchups more polarized. He still does just as bad against characters that can abuse his design, and now just does that much better against those that can't.

A better balance for this character design to me would be to keep him at that standard health, hell, even lower it if you want, because we're going to instead just make this character good overall. P still has a strong number of sweeps and they do in fact compose about 60% of his moveset. His upper hurtbox is still exposed on these moves, but there's a big difference in the character's design. Now P has, in addition to his anti-air elbow or whatever, a fast starting flash kick that, while lacking invincibility frames, quickly covers his entire hurtbox, that ends close to the ground. Additionally, his sweeps generally have a disjoint to them, and a combination of faster startup, low cooldown, or a little of both. Also, P has been granted the marvelous ability to MOVE! No longer is P restricted to pacing out throwing low sweeps and anti-air elbows waiting for the opponent to make a dumb mistake coming in, and he can now move without dedicating himself to a slide kick that gets beaten by any high or mid attack. He fits along with the rest of the cast even though his lows vastly outnumber those of the other characters and his design can easily be seen as "gimmicky" or "out of place."


Luckily, Project M has very few problematic design choices, and none are as extreme as P here. There are quite a few odd choices that are indicative of the beta nature of this project though, and hopefully all these can be rectified through overall better character designs without any "universal" weaknesses and instead with a conglomeration of moves that all have their own individual strengths and weaknesses looked at in likewise individual case-by-case bases.

 

[Gea]

What if part of making the bad character good to a baseline good involved making a large character small, or two characters one? Some characters will be polarizing by design and that design isn't going to change without destroying the character.

 

[9Kplus1]

He's fighting-steel. Why wouldn't he fall fast?

Late reply, but secondary typing doesn't always determine the physiology of a Pokemon. Think about Pokemon such as Swellow and Noctowl; their Normal typing doesn't have much of an effect on their appearance or flavor text -- especially once you take into consideration the only pure Flying-type (bar Arceus @ Sky Plate), Tornadus-T's attributes. Lucario's fall speed in Brawl and Pokemon isn't at all affected by his Steel typing. Matter of fact, Lucario's secondary typing is more abstract than anything -- "a heart of steel", "steel-willed", or something like that. I mean, canonically, if Lucario fell fast due to its typing, then it wouldn't be able to use moves such as Hi Jump Kick and Agility.

 

[Kink-Link5]

What if part of making the bad character good to a baseline good involved making a large character small, or two characters one? Some characters will be polarizing by design and that design isn't going to change without destroying the character.

Not really following you here. Carl Clover has a generally normal matchup spread compared to other characters in his same game, and Melee Ice Climbers' faults and polarization come from the reward they get and how easily other characters can deal with their grab. These are the only two real examples of having two characters, and neither really apply to being polarizing by their inherit nature and design. The only thing that is polarizing by nature is, as mentioned universal weaknesses alongside disproportionate strengths. Brawl Dedede's super slow fatass stuff in contrast to his 0-death combo off a large grab range on specific characters is polarizing. Ike's giant sword, its safeness on block, and an awful combination of lower hurtbox coverage and startup on moves is polarizing. Lucario's bizarely large cooldown on whiff for nearly everything in contrast to free and disproportionate rewards on a single hit or situational block is polarizing.

Care to elaborate what you mean by two characters being polarizing by nature? There are plenty of ways to form the archetype, however new it is, into a proper degree of strengths and weaknesses. The only time they end up getting disproportionate rewards is through oversights in design that didn't get noticed in alpha.

 

[Gea]

I'm not talking about BlazBlue, I'm talking about Ice Climbers. They will always be about giving great rewards when together, and being gimped with Sopo. That is their design, even chaingrabs aside. I couldn't really care less about theorizing on character design archetypes for games that function very differently. Carl Clover isn't limited by AI that can be spiked into a pit. Bowser will always be fat and thus easy to combo.

 

[Kink-Link5]

Easy to combo and degree of rewards aren't character weaknesses or strengths, as I went to quite thorough lengths explaining :/

A characters rewards become an issue of polarizing design when the character's method of obtaining those rewards works very well against some characters, and doesn't work at all against others. That is where you want to look when readjusting a characters uniqueness, strengths, and weaknesses.

Do you play either of these characters? Just wondering, because it can have a huge effect on how you examine the character.

 

[leelue]

I have to say kink has a great point here
And the climbers don't Have To be anything.
Mana could be super weak/auto back throw and popo could be fine but worse without her. Done. Kinda

 

[Kink-Link5]

U-throw instead of B-throw, but yeah, it's not a hard issue to deal with. PMBR already has the specific changes I've proposed for ICs with a handy reference point.