Project M Social Thread

[Sora-kun]

Look, if you want to challenge yourself just sandbag. Main "Falcon Punch" or wear an eye patch or something.

I don't understand how that's an argument for gimping some characters' potential.

Did i say "GIMP THIS CHaR aND MaKE FOX HaVE a 80-20 ON EVERYONE LOLOL"
No i didn't. I'm not saying that they shouldn't make everyone viable i'm saying it'd be more interesting with top tiers. Oh well i guess that's just me <_<

Well anyway I'm not gonna bother arguing this considering people love to misinterpret what I'm trying to say.


Good 2 know that Link is fun to play. Glad to hear it.

 

[I R MarF]

I don't think that characters should be "balanced" but disadvantegous characters should recieve certain buffs; primarily improved ATs.

Look at the current tier list, some characters aren't as disadvantegous as one would think. For instance, Link (15th) has a 40:60 matchup against Marth (2nd). I'd say that is already pretty viable.

 

[JCaesar]

http://www.ustream.tv/channel/jcaesar-brawl/

Stream will be up very soon, with some very interesting new things

 

[Deleted member]

I agree strongly with Rikana and Sora-kun. Having everyone so balanced that every match-up is 50-50 is the same reason why Brawl+ got boring and why BBrawl is always forgotten.

But I won't get into that, just so I can save myself.

There is no way in hell that anybody could balance match ups to 50-50 on all chars. Sheik vs. Falcon is not 50-50.

Trying to balance a game by making all characters top tier is unrealistic. Even just tightening the tier gap to where all the low tier chars are at least mid tier is better balance and is closer to a realistic goal of the project.

 

[Sora-kun]

There is no way in hell that anybody could balance match ups to 50-50 on all chars.

We realize this =_= that wasn't meant to be a realistic scenario. Just an example.

 

[Dark Sonic]

I agree strongly with Rikana and Sora-kun. Having everyone so balanced that every match-up is 50-50 is the same reason why Brawl+ got boring and why BBrawl is always forgotten.

But I won't get into that, just so I can save myself.

Uh...who said that every matchup will be 50-50? You do know that's pretty much impossible right? And even if it were possible, has anyone ever actually thought of what it would be like?


Here's a matchup experiment for you all. Take any particular top tier and look at one of their better matchups (70-30 or better). Think about WHY the matchup is so severe. Now, look at another 70-30 matchup. You may notice that the reason for it being so bad is the same as the first matchup. This trend only gets more and more definitive as you start looking at worse matchups.

Is that what you guys want? Do you guys want a game where half of the matchups are played the same? Falco plays against every character below Luigi EXACTLY THE SAME WAY. That is not acceptable from a game designer's perspective. When designing a game, character matchups are supposed to be dynamic. Strangely enough, the top and high tiers emulate this.

Marth vs Ganondorf is VERY different from Marth vs Falco, despite both of them being relatively even matchups. Peach does worse against Captain Falcon than she does against Falco, despite Falco being a better character overall. THIS is the kind of stuff that makes the game interesting, not watching a Pikachu struggle against every character he ever fights in tournaments. The game should be a mix of both good AND bad matchups, with each character having a concrete set of strengths and weaknesses to take advantage of.





Instead of playing a bad character so you can feel good about winning against average players, why don't you play a GOOD character so you can feel good about winning against GOOD players? No designer should set out with the goal to make characters bad. The goal is to make every character have a near equal chance of winning if they were to all fight everyone. This doesn't mean that there won't be advantages, but they're supposed to spread out. Fighting game balance is supposed to be just a very elaborate form of rock, paper, scissors, yet you guys want to make characters that always lose? Just so that you can have "bragging rights" for occasionally winning against anyone?

 

[kaizo13]

Shanus now that Falco was refined, you think we can get some technical Falco footage on Smashmods. ^^?

 

[CountKaiser]

I agree strongly with Rikana and Sora-kun. Having everyone so balanced that every match-up is 50-50 is the same reason why Brawl+ got boring and why BBrawl is always forgotten.

But I won't get into that, just so I can save myself.

Balance isn't why people are finding B+ boring.

Balance prompts a wider display of characters, which leads to more interesting matches as they will contain matchups that would not be normally seen otherwise.

Saying balance is bad because it makes the game boring is a terrible excuse to make it imbalanced.

 

[kaizo13]

its wasn't balance specifically that made B+ boring for me, it was the way they balanced it.

if everybody was just as good as the best character it would still be balanced right? but instead they set the "balance line" somewhere around the middle

therefore all the nerfs that don't allow characters to be played at their full potential
(that's what turned me away from B+.......oh and P:M )

 

[Gardevior]

Brawl+ doesn't have everyone mediocre...IMO, Brawl+ has everyone good.

BalancedBrawl seems like it's revolved around nerfs - bring down the top and make the low tiers get up to the middle.

(I'm not comparing the two projects here, just how I think they each find "balance")

 

[GP&B]

I still find this all incredibly stupid. It still sounds like sentiment over such minor dribble (as a rude way to put it). Actually, the way Dark Sonic put it was best.

 

[Sora-kun]

yet you guys want to make characters that always lose? Just so that you can have "bragging rights" for occasionally winning against anyone?

If that bit was directed at me then i'll just say that wasn't my point. I never said make bad characters. I said it's more fun to fight at a disadvantage as in vs top tiers e.e I never said i choose low tiers so i could feel good about myself when i occasionally win. I mostly end up with low tiers because i use my favorite. This is irrelevant, i'm saying a bit of unbalance is more interesting than perfect balance.

 

[Sneak8288]

Shanus now that Falco was refined, you think we can get some technical Falco footage on Smashmods. ^^?

Give me a few days and i'll try to get some techy falco dittos together.

 

[Dark Sonic]

This is irrelevant, i'm saying a bit of unbalance is more interesting than perfect balance.

Then you and I have a dramatically different definition of the word "balance."


One form Perfect balance would be a rock paper scissors scenario, where EVERY character and tactic has a direct counter (or counters), leading to no one character being better than another, simply because they each have the same chance of encountering a counter matchup with the same difficulty. That is a perfectly balanced game despite the uneven matchups.


Another form of perfect balance would be for every character to have 50:50 matchups against every other character. Pretty obvious

Yet ANOTHER form of perfect balance would be a combination of both in theory. I feel that this would end up being the most interesting metagame. Characters with more 50:50 matchups and less disadvantages would be more stable, but as long as they have a suitable amount of bad matchups then the metagame would simply shift to take advantage of the influx of said character. This would then lead to the influx of the new "popular" character's counter for a continuous change of character "saturation" in tournaments. Of course, the character with less drastic matchups would do well in most environments (where his counter doesn't happen to be the most popular character at the time).

The last example is what I think we should be striving towards. Of course, we won't ever reach perfect balance, but having no one character be terrible is a reasonable goal.


but...balance comes later so stop talking about it now!

/balance discussion

 

[dansal]

This entire conversation is really embarrassing to read.

 

[GHNeko]

ITT: Mahvel vs Virtual Fighter

rof rof rof

Spoiler

no one will get this joke

 

[Sora-kun]

what he just said.

Omg =_= did i once say i want there to be terrible characters?

w/e one thing i do think about this is that the top tier characters should be the hardest to master(fox). None of that Meta Knight BS where you play him for fifteen minutes and become halfway decent.

Me saying it shouldn't be PERFECTLY balanced is not implying that i want only one character to be viable/win all the time. You're blowing my statement out off proportion.

 

[Dark Sonic]

No I'm not, you're just claiming that I am by scewing my argument.

You're saying that having some characters be better than others makes the game interesting, and I'm saying that it doesn't. You're implying that for a game to be balanced all characters need to have equal matchups with each other, and I'm giving an example of a PERFECTLY balanced game that still retains matchup diversity.

You say that fighting uphill battles is entertaining, I'm saying that a perfectly balanced game can STILL HAVE uphill battles. Learn to read <_<

 

[rekrapadept]

Caught the last bit of the stream. I like how Samus is looking. Quick question about missiles: Will seeker missiles still be (i don't want to say useless...) very situational? i guess what i'm asking is will Samus be able to use seeker missiles on stage for approach/retreats or will they be completely overshadowed by power missiles due to "true missile canceling"?

 

[Sora-kun]

No I'm not, you're just claiming that I am by scewing my argument.

You're saying that having some characters be better than others makes the game interesting, and I'm saying that it doesn't. You're implying that for a game to be balanced all characters need to have equal matchups with each other, and I'm giving an example of a PERFECTLY balanced game that still retains matchup diversity.

You say that fighting uphill battles is entertaining, I'm saying that a perfectly balanced game can STILL HAVE uphill battles. Learn to read <_<

So many things wrong with this. i'll ignore the first sentence since it's a matter of opinion and i stated several times what i meant and you seem to have ignored it every time. Second sentence is REaLLY F***'d up considering i said that was a theoretic scenario. I never said i considered that balance <_< Perfect balance imho is where every character is considered tournament viable, every character has counters, everyone can be equally expected to win in a tournament. The every matchup = 50-50 was an example. I stated that at least 3 times now. I said "uphill battles" are more rewarding when you succeed. You're again twisting what i was trying to say. Note that saying "learn to read" doesn't make you right. It is just an ignorant way of saying that you think i'm not comprehending what you're saying. I am. However, you don't seem to be actually thinking about my statement and you're simply ignoring it and arguing. This argument isn't even important at this point tbh (as the one person said). Learn to think <_<
inb4hypocrisy

 

[dansal]

This topic is really embarrassing to read, I hope the developers ignore the last 10 posters or so and just stay the course.

 

[camelot]

This topic is really embarrassing to read, I hope the developers ignore the last 10 posters or so and just stay the course.

Don't worry, we are.

 

[jalued]

to voice my opinion on the whole roll-up edge-guarding thing (i was away for a bit), i feel that it was a very good way of balancing alot of the characters and made the game faster and more intense.

Yes you can argue that it required little timing and you should and try and go for the kill move, however some characters had very limited options for that (bowser, DK etc) when hanging on the edge. The only real way Bowser could kill in melee was to edge-guard using his roll-up animation

Its not like you seem to suggest Jceaser: the rolling glitch doesn't guarantee an edge-guard, it is more of a discrete blast-zone size reduction that makes any move a potential KO. It cuts down options for alot of recovering characters (sheik, marth etc) and helps to balances their weaknesses.

I bet that this would slash the average game time by more than a minute (4 stock) and would benefit this project immensely in terms of game play and appeal

i hope that it can be coded someday

 

[Sneak8288]

So many things wrong with this. i'll ignore the first sentence since it's a matter of opinion and i stated several times what i meant and you seem to have ignored it every time. Second sentence is REaLLY F***'d up considering i said that was a theoretic scenario. I never said i considered that balance <_< Perfect balance imho is where every character is considered tournament viable, every character has counters, everyone can be equally expected to win in a tournament. The every matchup = 50-50 was an example. I stated that at least 3 times now. I said "uphill battles" are more rewarding when you succeed. You're again twisting what i was trying to say. Note that saying "learn to read" doesn't make you right. It is just an ignorant way of saying that you think i'm not comprehending what you're saying. I am. However, you don't seem to be actually thinking about my statement and you're simply ignoring it and arguing. This argument isn't even important at this point tbh (as the one person said). Learn to think <_<
inb4hypocrisy

There will still be an uphill battle depending on the skill level of the players playing. If i beat a pro with my high tier character even if they played a low tier it would still be a rewarding experience because i would be the underdog. The tier list wouldn't make my win any less of an accomplishment. An upset is an upset regardless.

 

[JCaesar]

to voice my opinion on the whole roll-up edge-guarding thing (i was away for a bit), i feel that it was a very good way of balancing alot of the characters and made the game faster and more intense.

Yes you can argue that it required little timing and you should and try and go for the kill move, however some characters had very limited options for that (bowser, DK etc) when hanging on the edge. The only real way Bowser could kill in melee was to edge-guard using his roll-up animation

Its not like you seem to suggest Jceaser: the rolling glitch doesn't guarantee an edge-guard, it is more of a discrete blast-zone size reduction that makes any move a potential KO. It cuts down options for alot of recovering characters (sheik, marth etc) and helps to balances their weaknesses.

I bet that this would slash the average game time by more than a minute (4 stock) and would benefit this project immensely in terms of game play and appeal

i hope that it can be coded someday

With Bowser, you could just time the ledge invincibility, or if you need to, do an invincible bair. I don't see why anyone would prefer passive edgeguarding over active edgeguarding. You can still kill the recovering character in all the same situations.

Faster and more intense? Nahhh, pretty much the opposite by definition.

 

[Archangel]

Ok so....about the whole balance thing it's not possible so drop it. It would take years to perfectly balance out this game or any other game and I'm not waiting. This is Project M not Project B(Balance) And Melee was anything but balanced. With that said I do what you can to give pieces of **** a chance then after that move on imo.

As for the progress It's so amazing. I remember watching Zelda **** on a stream and a bunch of other faulty thing and I was really concerned. The amount of improvement since that stream is WAAAAAAAY more than I expected. There really isn't a need for a new Trailer now that there exists 5 hours worth of gameplay LOL. Still it would be nice.

 

[Dark Sonic]

:edited post because it's not worth derailing the thread again.


Moving back to the ledge occupancy thing, I agree with Jalued overall, but feel he gave poor examples.

Let's look at edgeguarding Peach as....Link. In the rare occasion that Link manages to actually force Peach to go for the ledge, what is he going to do about it? None of his aerials send at an angle that would kill Peach, and there's currently not enough ledge occupancy on any action to actually edgehog her. Now, I'm not advocating for the tremendous ledge occupancy of rolls to come back, but (were it ever possible to code) asking for ledge attack and ledge getup occupancy seems perfectly reasonable. He wouldn't be able to just roll as she starts her up B, but by grabbing the ledge just before it he could avoid getting hit by most of it, and use a ledge getup to go through the weak hits here parasol does while she's floating down. Without this he'd either get hit and she'd grab the ledge immediately, or he'd get up through and and she'd grab the ledge immediately (in no scenario does Peach die).


And it also would technically speed up matches just because characters would die quicker <_<.

 

[I R MarF]

Hey, random question but since you are changing some of the special attacks of characters, like lucas's neutral b and side b... does this mean that the individual selections of the pokemon trainer's pokemon will each recieve their own, new, down b's?

 

[ValTroX]

Hey, random question but since you are changing some of the special attacks of characters, like lucas's neutral b and side b... does this mean that the individual selections of the pokemon trainer's pokemon will each recieve their own, new, down b's?

From what I understand Indi Pokes do NOT have down b's, thats a pokemon trainer move, so I don't think they will, but who knows. BTW I knew Lucas B was channging, but i did not know his side B was, enlighten me with details

 

[Revven]

Ok so....about the whole balance thing it's not possible so drop it. It would take years to perfectly balance out this game or any other game and I'm not waiting. This is Project M not Project B(Balance) And Melee was anything but balanced. With that said I do what you can to give pieces of **** a chance then after that move on imo.

Um... they're not striving for "perfect balance" (which is actually not very achievable at all) just SOME balance.

 

[DotheDiddyMonkeyDance]

I actually have a question about Pokemon trainer as well. I was wondering if you guys could make Pokemon trainer have the code for not switching out Pokemon on death. So that way you would still feel like your playing your independent Pokemon but could change whenever but not due to death. I know one of the other versions of Brawl does this which ever it is I really don't know. I know you could always just choose an independent one but idk I actually sorta like seeing Poketrainer running back and forth.

 

[Rikana]

I agree strongly with Rikana and Sora-kun. Having everyone so balanced that every match-up is 50-50

lolwut? When did I ever say I wanted 50-50 match ups? You misunderstood my point of view.

From what I understand Indi Pokes do NOT have down b's, thats a pokemon trainer move, so I don't think they will, but who knows. BTW I knew Lucas B was channging, but i did not know his side B was, enlighten me with details

Lucas shoots out ice now for his pk fire.

 

[.Marik]

I agree strongly with Rikana and Sora-kun. Having everyone so balanced that every match-up is 50-50 is the same reason why Brawl+ got boring and why BBrawl is always forgotten.

Matchups in Brawl+ are far from 50-50 the vast majority of the time.

 

[wowoduend]

There are barely any 50-50 matchups in Brawl+ from what i remember >_>

Captain Falcon vs Lucario says Hi

 

[I R MarF]

Why is this balancing issue being so hotly debated?

I am pretty sure it was confimred earlier that top/high tiers are not going to recieve any nerfs and are going to be as similar as possible to their melee counterparts. It is obvious that disadvantageous characters will recieve the appropriate tweaks necessary to give them more viability, as evidence by G&W and from the sounds of things, Link as well. But there will most likely be no nerfing, the only possible exception being MK.

With this knowledge, it'd be impossible to balance characters. And why would you complain? Already on the melee tier list, all of the characters between Fox and Ganondorf are highly viable and the majority have a favorable average matchup ratio. Leaving need for any major balancing overkill.

All of the other characters just need appropriate buffs and the game will naturally balance itself; what made kirby and pickachu high tier in 64 but low in melee? Bringing back their old abilities may just be the appropriate fixes to make them viable again.

So in conclusion, aiming for 50-50 matchups is a dumb, and an impossible idea. There will always be advantages, and there will always be disadvantages. I don't disagree with somewhere down the road that bad characters should recieve the neccessary attention so their average matchup ratio is not below 40-60. However, No one should be nerfed, and no one should bother arguing. I trust the P:M development team will give us what we are all hoping for: a true sequel, and not give us a BBrawl/Brawl+ with Melee physics and camera.

 

[Sterowent]

...BTW I knew Lucas B was changing, but i did not know his side B was, enlighten me with details

you know how, in the Mother series, PK fire hits a whole row of opponents, and PK freeze hits one enemy but harder than fire?
it's just a graphical change to his sideB (and sideB collision on opponents), but at the same time it makes a bunch more sense, hah. not like it took longer to cast PK freeze than PK fire anyway.

 

[shanus]

stop discussing balance


thanks

 

[TLMSheikant]

Finally someone played the YTL hybrid. Looked incredibly interesting . Peach is also looking good but I couldnt tell if she had the melee dsmash...Link's new boomerang is also looking amazing. Im so looking forward to playing this...someday, maybe in a few years, in the distant future.

 

[Shell]

And let me remind everyone that there's no point in arguing about ledge occupancy unless shanus suddenly discovers a way to make that work, and we'll let you all know if that happens. I will start reporting people for spam if they bring it up again. Thanks.

/end bad cop

 

[I R MarF]

Is Meta Knight's new jump here to stay? I don't think its that big of an issue, but he could just hover next to edges and be a [edgehogging] pro.