Project M Social Thread

[Wobbly Headed Bob]

You know absolutely nothing about game design, and by this point I consider you as laughable as those "tiers don exits" people.

It is impossible. Not improbable, not "highly unlikely". Impossible. Anyone with even the slightest idea of how games work can say this. Stop living in a dream world.

Arcansi being disconnected from reality seems to be a recurring theme.

It's not even just a matter of game design, but logic. As long as two things are fundamentally different, one will be better at one thing than the other. It's best to think of character balance as an asymptotic line.

 

[Stevo]

Edit: lol @ me being a weaboo. I bet I'm the only person on this page who doesn't watch anime. I drive a truck and my favorite genre of music is classic rock (putting that in Smash would cause copyright issues though).

/tired rant

plus that beard.
Manly Men.

Do you wear plaid and wrestle with bears too? Or is that a Canadian only thing.

 

[standardtoaster]

manly men things like wrestling bears and taking out the garbage

 

[leafbarrett]

You know absolutely nothing about game design, and by this point I consider you as laughable as those "tiers don exits" people.

It is impossible. Not improbable, not "highly unlikely". Impossible. Anyone with even the slightest idea of how games work can say this, and your argument is based only on the flimsiest understanding of both game design and programming imaginable. Stop living in a dream world.

I... hate to admit it, but he's right. Achieving truly perfect balance is impossible, as the metagame will always shift that balance, however slightly, in one direction or another. People will find new strategies, techniques, and tricks.
However! That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to achieve as close to perfect balance as you possibly can. To accept that true balance is impossible, that is wise. But to write it off as a lost cause is foolish. The closer you get to that balance, the better the game as a whole will become.

 

[McNinja]

manly men things like wrestling bears and taking out the garbage

And showing their moves.

 

[GaretHax]

I... hate to admit it, but he's right. Achieving truly perfect balance is impossible, as the metagame will always shift that balance, however slightly, in one direction or another. People will find new strategies, techniques, and tricks.
However! That doesn't mean you shouldn't try to achieve as close to perfect balance as you possibly can. To accept that true balance is impossible, that is wise. But to write it off as a lost cause is foolish. The closer you get to that balance, the better the game as a whole will become.

Imo that's not necessarily true. The closer you get to a true 50/50 "balanced" ideal, the more you have to remove and fine tune characters to ensure that in every situation and with every gimmick you don't lose the coveted mu spread between everything. Imo this would logically lead to characters who all end up being jacks of all trades, with somewhat disjointed and akward movesets, and a lack of all the janky, hype, and truely awesome stuff people expect from a game like smash. It doesn't necessarily have to go down anything like that, of course, its just my opinion on the matter. But imo having a couple 65-35's, maybe a 70-30 or two, and a ton of 60-40/50-50/55-45 is about as close as you can really get.
But I guess in the end I'm still agreeing with you anyway lol...

 

[Wobbly Headed Bob]

Imo that's not necessarily true. The closer you get to a true 50/50 "balanced" ideal, the more you have to remove and fine tune characters to ensure that in every situation and with every gimmick you don't lose the coveted mu spread between everything. Imo this would logically lead to characters who all end up being jacks of all trades, with somewhat disjointed and akward movesets, and a lack of all the janky, hype, and truely awesome stuff people expect from a game like smash. It doesn't necessarily have to go down anything like that, of course, its just my opinion on the matter. But imo having a couple 65-35's, maybe a 70-30 or two, and a ton of 60-40/50-50/55-45 is about as close as you can really get.
But I guess in the end I'm still agreeing with you anyway lol...

They would still not be clones each other, and thus despite all of them being jacks of all trades, one would be better at a trade than another. That could possibly lead to a true rock-paper-scissor counterpick balance, but we'd still be dealing with infinitesimals. lol

 

[Oracle]

You can't have a perfectly balanced game in terms of matchups, but you can get pretty close. Honestly thats not even really a problem right now. There are very few matchups in this game where characters just lose on virtue of them being bad characters, and even then most of those are going away with 2.5. Even if you play g&w or zard or something, if you're better than your opponent you'll still win almost all the time. Isn't that the only thing that really matters?

 

[Wobbly Headed Bob]

Hey guys guys. Is it possible for you to bring back the demolished Luigi's Mansion as a stage additional to Dracula's Castle. I can't play Moonlit Wilderness in any other stage. :v

 

[Rikana]

We are not going to provide weekly/biweekly/frequent updates. It's the decision we've made. We are sorry if you feel the need to get constant updates. We won't be changing it.

I'm also a dota player myself and I feel that the pmbr is doing the right thing by releasing updates at their own rate right now.

 

[bubbaking]

It's definitely not that version of Norfair. (Axcel's version is cool and all, but it's definitely not competitive friendly.) On Jolte0n's stream of 2.5 that I saw last week, it was one with the layout like this...

    _______
___          ___
    _______

...where the two platforms on the sides on occasions would slowly move inwards/outwards (symmetrically with each other), and the stage has no hazards of any kind. Given that Norfair is on the first page, it seems that that version will likely be in 2.5. That is, unless they plan to change the SSS layout for the official release and move Norfair to the 2nd page and not have the version on Jolte0n's stream, but then that would just be cruel. I love the version of Norfair that I saw on the stream, and there would be no reason to have vNorfair over that, since who plays on vNorfair, anyway...

I saw that version of Norfair for the first time when I went over to Vanguard's, so it might be his (or maybe he just got it from whoever truly created it). Either way, it's cool but circle camping CAN become an issue for certain characters.

Even if you play g&w or zard or something, if you're better than your opponent you'll still win almost all the time. Isn't that the only thing that really matters?

Well, I almost agree with you. In fact, I agree with you about Zard, but if you play G&W or Wario, until 2.5 comes out, you're kinda bound to be doomed to lose to some people worse than you are and for dumb reasons.

 

[Comeback Kid]

So here is the version of Norfair that was seen last week:

http://www.twitch.tv/jolte0n/b/347815720

Go to the 1:30:30 mark.

One thing I noticed immediately: the top platform looks smaller compared to the just unveiled stage select version, which is noticeably longer than the bottom platform:

This suggests to me that Jolteon is using a beta version of the stage, and the actual stage will have the bigger top platform.

 

[bubbaking]

Yeah, that's why circle camping can be a minor problem.

 

[Comeback Kid]

Yeah, that's why circle camping can be a minor problem.

Your welcome then.

I hate it when people talk about something and don't show what their talking about, so I thought I would do the forum goers the common courtesy of looking it up.

 

[bubbaking]

Yeah, that Norfair that Jolteon's playing on definitely has a smaller top plat. I'm actually hoping that's the version we get, because it seems like circle camping would be much less of an issue there. You're asking for trouble when your top plat is larger than your bottom plat a.k.a. main stage.

 

[Comeback Kid]

You're asking for trouble when your top plat is larger than your bottom plat a.k.a. main stage.

Unless the top platform is the main stage in this level to be unique.

Did I just blow your mind or what?

I like the bigger top platform as it is. I would make the bottom platform a little smaller to emphasize what a danger zone it is down there. Basically just cut off the edges.

 

[McNinja]

Hmm maybe if you couldn't fall through the top platform so you couldn't have all the fun platform gimmicks.

 

[GaretHax]

Hmm maybe if you couldn't fall through the top platform so you couldn't have all the fun platform gimmicks.

I kinda fail to see how an integral part of high level play, found on nearly every stage, qualifies as a gimmick. I think the design is cool, camping could be an issue but I don't think solidifying the top platform would fix it, jumping around between them and avoiding confrontation would really just get easier. Best to leave the offensive options intact IMO.

 

[bubbaking]

Gotta agree with Garet there. Solidifying the top plat would just make the camping problem worse, not better.

 

[leafbarrett]

I'm not sure if it's my own incompetence, but I'm having a LOT of trouble getting any combos off with Zelda. Also, the height of her hop annoys me greatly.

 

[Wobbly Headed Bob]

I support the Norfair redesign. I can't identify any fundamental problems with it. It seems like it could be a valuable counterpick for some characters.

Worst case scenario, too much of the gameplay is restricted or it provides an unfair advantage to characters that are already good like a Jigglypuff floating safely under the stage and safely Uair anything above it, turning the match severely one-sided.

 

[Perfect Chaos]

This suggests to me that Jolteon is using a beta version of the stage, and the actual stage will have the bigger top platform.

The image used for the Norfair thumbnail in the recent SSS update seems to be the same image that was accidentally left in the SSS of 2.1's release (which was later changed to the regular Norfair image), which just suggests to me that they just haven't gotten to changing the thumbnail to fit the more updated version of Norfair:M that was on Jolte0n's stream. So the small top platform is definitely the newer version.
I've heard that circle camping was somewhat of a problem before (back when it had the larger top platform). But even if it still has a small problem like that, it'll still be better to have it for friendlies than to have vNorfair, since the original stage is not even fun to play on, IMO...
Personally, I think that, if possible, one hazard should be still be left in, and that would be lava rising from the bottom to cover ONLY the bottom platform for a short amount of time (and possibly at set intervals). That'll make the stage stay more true to the original and make it a little more counterpick-like, but not crazy enough that it's unplayable like vNorfair. But if not, this version is fine, too.

EDIT: Also, all this stage talk made me remember something: I hope that they make SSE: Jungle smaller. It's still a little big even for teams. It's so big that you can easily do two 1v1 matches on that stage with little interference from the other party. <_< I heard that shrinking just the horizontal width caused the background to look all skinny as well. But how about shrinking everything (including the vertical height), and then readjusting the platforms separately to size and position it where desired? That shouldn't affect the height-to-width ratio of the rest of the stage's appearance, but getting it to be less wide in the end. I've talked to a PMBR member about this, before, but I'm posting this here now to see what everyone else thinks about it.

 

[drsusredfish]

I'm not sure if it's my own incompetence, but I'm having a LOT of trouble getting any combos off with Zelda. Also, the height of her hop annoys me greatly.

zeldas easy combos are up smash to fair/bair on most characters at low %, land cancel nayru to ftilt or up smash is another easy one. be careful of crouch cancels with this though. jab to dash grab is ussually pretty good mix this up with jab to dash attack.

tiped F-tilt to up smash is common at lower percents. take advantage of her ftilt. on sheild a tiped ftilt is pretty safe and if the opponet tries to grab they may whiff so you can go for another ftilt and start the above combos.

f-throw to fair works if the opponent DI's wrong. D-throw to bair works with wrong di. L-canceled nair to D-smash is good. Dins fire combos to and from all sorts of things so you just got to work with them on the fly. nayru into an already set dins fire is an easy din combo set up.

zelda isn't made to have the best follow ups and combos, even though she can obviously, but she is pretty good at geting the opponent to go where she wants.

one thing you should master with zelda is geting 2 fairs or 2 bairs, or one of each, into one short hop. This isn't a combo but the tight timing makes the opponent think twice about droping their sheild.

 

[leafbarrett]

I just did 24% with Zelda's utaunt. ._.;

The only combo I can consistently pull off is uthrow to uair, and even that's iffy.

Also, my c-stick doesn't function properly, so aerials are kind of a problem. D:

 

[MonkUnit]

Press and hold X, Y, and Start for several seconds to reset your controller. That should fix your C-stick.

 

[Mattnumbers]

Arcansi being disconnected from reality seems to be a recurring theme.

It's not even just a matter of game design, but logic. As long as two things are fundamentally different, one will be better at one thing than the other. It's best to think of character balance as an asymptotic line.

You act like you know the guy. All he did was tell you that you were calling your own musical opinions fact (which you were). You call yourself logical yet you're attacking him personally for something so small (and correct at that). Last time I checked ad hominem was an informal fallacy, and you are obviously trying to make your point look better by calling him "disconnected from reality" .

You too scarr. You're saying he knows nothing about game design based off of a few posts about theoretical balance. He's just trying to say that it is not impossible in theory, which is true. It's just very impractical and almost impossible due to the amount of variables.
Also, two completely different things can have the exact same value so your argument doesn't really hold water. This isn't a difficult concept, you live in a capitalist society where people assign a value to almost everything.
100% balance may be impractical, but that shouldn't stop the team from attempting to get as close as possible while still retaining the individuality of characters. Saying "Oh it'll never be perfectly balanced so why even try" is just poor reasoning. If the PMBR were to follow that, they would have just left all the newcomers as their directly ported selves regardless of if that meant they were terrible.

 

[trash?]

Personally, I think that, if possible, one hazard should be still be left in, and that would be lava rising from the bottom to cover ONLY the bottom platform for a short amount of time (and possibly at set intervals). That'll make the stage stay more true to the original and make it a little more counterpick-like, but not crazy enough that it's unplayable like vNorfair. But if not, this version is fine, too.

Talking about counterpicks for a moment, we really shouldn't rely on them anymore. Quoting from this thread on SmashMods:

We do away with the traditional Counterpick system entirely. It was only needed because of a small usable stagelist, and bad character design. We now have the capability to fix all of that.

8-10 neutral stages. Only the best and least random and truly most neutral survive. If we need a couple more, the team makes them. If we need less, the team perfects the best ones.

Once we have the stages, everything works normally. Bans, and counterpicks only from the neutral list.

"What if a character needs a CP/ is bad on the neutrals?" We fix the character.

"What about Randall/DL64 wind/Yoshis Island Ghosts? They make those stages randomish?" Remove all that stuff if it is that bad.

This is something I feel a lot of people need to realize with PM.

Saying "Oh it'll never be perfectly balanced so why even try" is just poor reasoning. If the PMBR were to follow that, they would have just left all the newcomers as their directly ported selves regardless of if that meant they were terrible.

That's not an argument I've ever made. Keep up.

 

[Mattnumbers]

I didn't say it was you who said that, but it's definitely been said, although probably not quite as directly. Last paragraph was directed at the thread in general not either of you specifically.

 

[drsusredfish]

looking at ZSS flipstool you guys should let her do her vbrawl down b attack out of the flipstool. so in P:M it'd be : down b, press b to jump off the opponent, then press A to do the vbrawl attack from down b with all its lingering hit box glory and it has no landing lag since you have to go through so many loops to do it. or if not that let her do any airiel from the flipstool.

 

[Comeback Kid]

The image used for the Norfair thumbnail in the recent SSS update seems to be the same image that was accidentally left in the SSS of 2.1's release (which was later changed to the regular Norfair image), which just suggests to me that they just haven't gotten to changing the thumbnail to fit the more updated version of Norfair:M that was on Jolte0n's stream. So the small top platform is definitely the newer version.
I've heard that circle camping was somewhat of a problem before (back when it had the larger top platform). But even if it still has a small problem like that, it'll still be better to have it for friendlies than to have vNorfair, since the original stage is not even fun to play on, IMO...
Personally, I think that, if possible, one hazard should be still be left in, and that would be lava rising from the bottom to cover ONLY the bottom platform for a short amount of time (and possibly at set intervals). That'll make the stage stay more true to the original and make it a little more counterpick-like, but not crazy enough that it's unplayable like vNorfair. But if not, this version is fine, too.

Great info. We should start a detective agency.

I agree that lava raising to the bottom platform would be a good deterrent to camping without being too crazy.

Oh and scarr: Fox only, no items, final destination. Ruining the stage variety by getting rid of good CP stages was not the purpose of Project M.

 

[trash?]

...I don't see where I said that. I'd prefer a variety where it isn't designed around hiding a character's faults, though.

 

[leafbarrett]

Press and hold X, Y, and Start for several seconds to reset your controller. That should fix your C-stick.

No, as in the C-stick does not function correctly, period. To be blunt, my Wii doesn't work (okay, it technically works, but only once out of every 10 to 20 attempts, and if you add Stack Smash having to re-run the disc to work...), so I have to practice on Dolphin, and my GCN to USB converter is malfunctioning; the C-stick isn't read correctly.

We do away with the traditional Counterpick system entirely. It was only needed because of a small usable stagelist, and bad character design. We now have the capability to fix all of that.
8-10 neutral stages. Only the best and least random and truly most neutral survive. If we need a couple more, the team makes them. If we need less, the team perfects the best ones.
Once we have the stages, everything works normally. Bans, and counterpicks only from the neutral list.
"What if a character needs a CP/ is bad on the neutrals?" We fix the character.
"What about Randall/DL64 wind/Yoshis Island Ghosts? They make those stages randomish?" Remove all that stuff if it is that bad.

Not to disparage the work the stage makers, but... 41 stages to work with, and we're cutting it to 8-10?

 

[trash?]

Not to disparage the work the stage makers, but... 41 stages to work with, and we're cutting it to 8-10?

Not an official stagelist idea. It was an idea given by someone when discussing tournament stagelists. Mostly, I showed it on here because there's a lot of things that have been kept in the transition of melee as workarounds to larger problems, and since we're able to tackle those problems now, there's no need for them to exist.

 

[drsusredfish]

can ZSS still wall jump out of her down b?

 

[standardtoaster]

yes she can

 

[Wobbly Headed Bob]

You act like you know the guy. All he did was tell you that you were calling your own musical opinions fact (which you were). You call yourself logical yet you're attacking him personally for something so small (and correct at that). Last time I checked ad hominem was an informal fallacy, and you are obviously trying to make your point look better by calling him "disconnected from reality" .

You too scarr. You're saying he knows nothing about game design based off of a few posts about theoretical balance. He's just trying to say that it is not impossible in theory, which is true. It's just very impractical and almost impossible due to the amount of variables.
Also, two completely different things can have the exact same value so your argument doesn't really hold water. This isn't a difficult concept, you live in a capitalist society where people assign a value to almost everything.
100% balance may be impractical, but that shouldn't stop the team from attempting to get as close as possible while still retaining the individuality of characters. Saying "Oh it'll never be perfectly balanced so why even try" is just poor reasoning. If the PMBR were to follow that, they would have just left all the newcomers as their directly ported selves regardless of if that meant they were terrible.

Virtually, everything you just said is false.

First of all, I've had discussions with the guy before, and it's impossible to reason with him. I've said he's disconnected from reality in other threads prior to this. I'm confident that I know the guy (or at least his argumentative skills) better than you at this point.

Furthermore, no one older than 12 should still believe in the oversimplified reasoning of "fact vs opinion". The world is much more complex than that. In fact, an opinion can be a fact and vice-versa. Moreover, I never even remotely suggested that my musical opinion is of an objective value (which is a term that befits your attempted critique more). However, one thing that it seems I have to repeat every time to internet pseudo-intellectuals is that "subjective" is not equivalent to "arbitrary". Opinions in the subjective goes beyond mere expression of affinity. An opinion in an artistic matter (and most other things) is formulated based on the understanding, knowledge, perception, intelligence, and personality of the opiner. I suggest you read into philosophy of aesthetics.

That's right, ad hominem is an informal fallacy, I suggest you try learning what a term means before throwing it around and pretending you made a point. An ad hominem fallacy occurs when it is part of an argument. And as you may not realize, partaking in argumentation does not mean making claims. An argument is a set of premises that follow into a conclusion. A fallacy occurs when these sets of premises do not support the conclusion, in which case the argument is neither valid or sound (which are qualifiers of deductive reasoning), although they may still be strong and cogent (qualifiers of inductive reasoning).

I did not commit an ad hominem fallacy by claiming that he's disconnected by reality, since it was merely a claim that was not followed by a conclusion, but it is rather just a claim if not a conclusion. You see, all of his awfully thought out claims were independently responded to, so for you to say that I'm committing a fallacy displays a fundamental lack of understanding of argumentation on your part or some selective memory handicap. As I mentioned, I actually have an academic background in logic, so please try to make proper estimations before jumping in.


The point is that it is also impossible in theory, although it can be regarded as possible in virtue. If two things have the exact same values, then per the law of identity of indiscernibles, they are the same thing. In other words, if x=2 and y=2, then x=y.

There's a reason why I said that if two things are fundamentally different, then one is better than the other at something. If two characters were exactly the same, but were different colors, you can consider them the same character and that would essentially be the only way to achieve perfect balance (disregarding that a color may be more strategically practical than another lol).

Trying to use money to determine something's value is an oversimplification. What is more useful to a farmer in the middle of nowhere, a $2 bill or a hammer that he could have bought for $2?


And again, it seems like you have an issue with reading comprehension, since it was clearly stressed that achieving the highest possible balance while maintaining cast diversity is a priority. It is virtually the same thing as trying to achieve the impossible standard of perfect balance.

Please people, think twice before you post. (This includes myself.)

I didn't say it was you who said that, but it's definitely been said, although probably not quite as directly. Last paragraph was directed at the thread in general not either of you specifically.

Oh, so it's not relevant to anything. Ok.

 

[curry9186]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember either Monk or toaster saying once that the modified Norfair doesn't have hazards because they couldn't get them to work the way they wanted.

 

[Comeback Kid]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I remember either Monk or toaster saying once that the modified Norfair doesn't have hazards because they couldn't get them to work the way they wanted.

It's pretty much impossible to modify hazards other than changing damage or shutting them off on all the stages, so that doesn't surprise me.

 

[Wavebuster]

I'm not sure if it's my own incompetence, but I'm having a LOT of trouble getting any combos off with Zelda. Also, the height of her hop annoys me greatly.

Zelda's higher short hop is both a blessing and a burden. Its main strength is that it allows you to do two lightning kicks in a single short hop. That combined with the shield damage on the sweetspots can make double kicks potent.

Zelda isn't really a combo heavy character except when facing fast fallers, where her juggles into kick finishers can be long and deadly in the absence of platforms. Ftilt->Usmash->Uair at low percents is fairly common, as is Uthrow->Uair. The speed of Zelda's throws except Dthrow are affected by the target's weight, so the timing to jump and Uair after Uthrow will vary slightly depending on who you're fighting.

Also, rather than post in this primary thread which moves quickly, I'd recommend going here: http://www.smashmods.com/forum/forum-163.html . It also contains a starter guide for Zelda that I recently completed.

Speaking of which, that would be located here: http://www.smashmods.com/forum/thread-5871.html . Anyone will to read and comment on it including criticism would be appreciated.

 

[Pimpfish]

noirscythe, your reputation just got so much greater. im done being sarcastic for the night.

on topic: does ddd have very many combos? i love him, i believe he is a good char, but he is kind of boring to play. am i missing something in terms of combo starters?