Project M vs. Melee SD Remix: Let's Compare!

[Quillion]

Let's have a discussion about these two mods! Let's not make an effort to discuss which game is better, since by content, Project M is objectively the superior game.

Let's instead discuss the changes to characters in Project M vs the changes in SD Remix. Both do their own things, so which changes do you prefer?

 

[Ripple]

it already isn't fair to compare because SDR can't change animation or even expand upon the number of commands that an attack already has.

 

[Quillion]

it already isn't fair to compare because SDR can't change animation or even expand upon the number of commands that an attack already has.

's air and 's tilt have different animations.

Granted, they are modified versions of existing attacks, but animation hacks are already possible in Melee.

 

[Ripple]

Those animations already exist in the game as other moves on those same characters. You can't create new animations like pm

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

PM: Has Ike
Melee SD Remix: Does not have Ike

PM wins

 

[Shadic]

Just a friendly reminder that it will be easy to get infracted for trolling in this thread.

That's all. <3

 

[RomeDogg]

SD Remix has Young Link though so it wins.

 

[Sorry:(]

SD remix Falcon not being put into a helpless state when he connects a raptor boost in the air is quite delightful.

I wish that would be implemented for Falcon in PM.

 

[KeithTheGeek]

It's been a while since I've played SD Remix. The issue is I still sometimes play Melee in addition to PM (and I guess Smash 4) so I don't want to get acclimated to a version that isn't wildly played by most people. Otherwise, I would always be playing SDR because the prospect of a viable Pichu makes me happy in many ways.

Until they have the ability to do more to make the game stand on its own as PM has been able to, I don't want to jump on board. And that isn't a knock against SDR or the people making the game, it's just the unfortunate reality of Melee modding not being as far along as Brawl modding.

 

[Soft Serve]

SD remix Gnw is still my favorite smash character, so there's that. I like it, wish I had a set up that could run it.

I think SD remix does most of the melee mid/low tiers better than pm.

 

[PMS | LEVEL 100 MAGIKARP]

sd remix ness looks so fun

 

[Quillion]

SD remix Gnw is still my favorite smash character, so there's that. I like it, wish I had a set up that could run it.

I think SD remix does most of the melee mid/low tiers better than pm.

Giving Bowser a meteor in SDR was a pretty nice touch (though it's just his down-itemthrow animation).

 

[Quillion]

It's been a while since I've played SD Remix. The issue is I still sometimes play Melee in addition to PM (and I guess Smash 4) so I don't want to get acclimated to a version that isn't wildly played by most people. Otherwise, I would always be playing SDR because the prospect of a viable Pichu makes me happy in many ways.

Until they have the ability to do more to make the game stand on its own as PM has been able to, I don't want to jump on board. And that isn't a knock against SDR or the people making the game, it's just the unfortunate reality of Melee modding not being as far along as Brawl modding.

The only problem is that SDR hasn't gotten the support of the big-names in smashing like PM did. If someone could organize a big SDR tournament, we could see it as a pattern.

 

[KeithTheGeek]

I definitely would like to see that too. The only issue is that I can't see that being likely to happen when the game remains so similar to the base, whether the similarities are superficial or not. PM is significantly different from both Brawl and Melee, and has been fortunate enough to carve out an identity for itself.

 

[Quillion]

I definitely would like to see that too. The only issue is that I can't see that being likely to happen when the game remains so similar to the base, whether the similarities are superficial or not. PM is significantly different from both Brawl and Melee, and has been fortunate enough to carve out an identity for itself.

Are you saying that's the reason why Balanced Brawl never got any tournaments of its own?

That would be unfortunate, but how is Project M being its own game when it's explicitly trying to be a balanced Melee, which is just what Melee SD Remix is doing?

 

[KeithTheGeek]

Project M plays extremely similar to Melee but it isn't a 1:1 clone mechanically. There's mechanics introduced in Brawl that have been carried over, some slight differences in how inputs worked between Melee and Brawl/PM, and the characters were rebalanced in different ways. But also, PM has the entire Brawl roster to work with as well, offering characters and styles you couldn't really find in high level Melee play (with a few exceptions). PM ends up playing different from Melee as a result of these things, regardless of if it was ever intended to be Melee, but balanced.

SDR essentially is just Melee but balanced. I dunno about everyone else, but for me as a player it ends up hurting the game because there isn't a defining feature to help separate it from the pack. I would gladly put a lot more time into it, but that is reliant on a whole community making the same choice, and I can't help but feel that's not going to happen until they manage to pull something off like adding an original character to the roster (much as PM was able to do). Unfortunately, Melee isn't at the point where that can happen yet, and it won't be until more people want it to happen.

 

[DrinkingFood]

SDremix:
Less characters
Less stages
No RAR
No glide toss/AGT
No b-reversal
No turning grabs (brawl pivot grabs)
No airdodge out of ending IASA frames

PM:
No light shields
Worse tether mechanics
1 frame physics delay

That's the worst of each I think, take your pick unless you realize this is a stupid thread with no purpose because you can always play both.

 

[Sorry:(]

That's the worst of each I think, take your pick unless you realize this is a stupid thread with no purpose because you can always play both.

I think you forgot individual character changes. There is more to this than the game engine, cast, and stages.

Some of us feel like SD Remix is more balanced than PM. Many people I have spoken to believe the PMDT has suffered from favoritism in their attempts at character balance. Since PM is still changing, it is smart to have a thread like this to discuss the things we like from SD Remix that we hope the PMDT would include in PM.

I'm also just curious if the PMDT has studied the way characters were adjusted in SD remix for balance. In the event that they have not yet done that, I wish they would.

Snaps to what Soft Serve said:

I think SD remix does most of the melee mid/low tiers better than pm.

 

[Soft Serve]

I meant more character feel, like SD remix GnW feels amazing, so does link/ylink, DK feels amazing, it all still feels super organic when they work like the rest of melee.

Balance wise? No idea which is better. From my experience M2 is stupid strong in both games (completely different reasons though)

 

[DrinkingFood]

It feels more natural because what they exclusively did was make characters faster, stronger, etc instead of trying new things. Having your character be faster all feels naturally better because it provides the same kind of tool you already used, but with more success doing so. It's a very lazy balance approach because it reduces variety, but I understand they took that approach because that's the only option for Melee modding. So I'm not actually calling them lazy, just stating why it feels good and yet why it's nothing special.
Balance wise I'm not that interested in weighing in because SDR's meta has next to no development outside of what could be considered piggybacked from Melee. But somehow I doubt a small group of guys got that lucky editing some numbers, compared to hundreds of thousands of man hours worth of time that has been put into PM playtesting or just playing in general, all the while feedback provided kindly of rudely to the dev team.
But lemme say this, if you guys are under the impression that M2 is another brawl MK... lol. He's good but he's not at all above the level of the half a dozen or so characters that are very near him in viability. And they, not that separated from high/mid tier, either.

 

[Sorry:(]

I can see why more speed would make the characters who did badly in Melee feel so much better. However, evan if that is a lazy balance technique, if it feels that good, why not keep it? Speed is so much of what makes Melee Melee. As fast as PM is, I wish it were faster.

 

[DrinkingFood]

It's a very lazy balance approach because it reduces variety

I already said, but I'll explain in more detail or w/e
Reducing variety means there's a smaller pool of people your gameplay appeals to because you are restricting the number of optimal players to character archetypes that are known to be successful, for the sake of balance. You also homogenize matchups reducing the game's replay value and longevity. If everybody's DD/WDs become good, you lose the opportunity to give those characters as much leeway in other departments for fear of causing balance problems. A really blatant example is characters with static space control. Characters like Snake, Diddy, Zelda, ROB and a few others to lesser extents can't exist, because you've already buffed everyone to be fast, strong, mobile and combo well. Diddy's like 3 lf those things and still controls static space really well, and I'd make the argument he's a top 5 or top 10 character. So then you create a balance problem like Diddy, by trying to have enough variety and still having all characters feel fast and responsive; or you severely restrict character variety; or the third option, you have characters that don't feel artificially as fluid because you didn't crank up the numbers on their running speed, aerial mobility, etc but you still have those characters to appeal to players who want a more unique experience, and you also appeal to other players by giving them opportunities to play more unique matchups occasionally without making them feel like they got ****ed by a superior character.
Holy run-on sentence batman

 

[MechWarriorNY]

Uh, no, why bother?

 

[Quillion]

Project M plays extremely similar to Melee but it isn't a 1:1 clone mechanically. There's mechanics introduced in Brawl that have been carried over, some slight differences in how inputs worked between Melee and Brawl/PM, and the characters were rebalanced in different ways. But also, PM has the entire Brawl roster to work with as well, offering characters and styles you couldn't really find in high level Melee play (with a few exceptions). PM ends up playing different from Melee as a result of these things, regardless of if it was ever intended to be Melee, but balanced.

SDR essentially is just Melee but balanced. I dunno about everyone else, but for me as a player it ends up hurting the game because there isn't a defining feature to help separate it from the pack. I would gladly put a lot more time into it, but that is reliant on a whole community making the same choice, and I can't help but feel that's not going to happen until they manage to pull something off like adding an original character to the roster (much as PM was able to do). Unfortunately, Melee isn't at the point where that can happen yet, and it won't be until more people want it to happen.

Yeah, but the entire Melee vet roster in Brawl was reverted back to much of their original animations, regardless of whether they were cooler or not. That's something I really didn't like about PM.

 

[Quillion]

Some of us feel like SD Remix is more balanced than PM. Many people I have spoken to believe the PMDT has suffered from favoritism in their attempts at character balance. Since PM is still changing, it is smart to have a thread like this to discuss the things we like from SD Remix that we hope the PMDT would include in PM.

I'm also just curious if the PMDT has studied the way characters were adjusted in SD remix for balance. In the event that they have not yet done that, I wish they would.

I second that last paragraph, although SD Remix itself is changing, too as it (as well as Melee hacking in general) are in relatively undeveloped states.

It would certainly be nice of the SDR devs could hack PM to change the characters to their SDR versions. When Melee hacking progresses to the advanced point, PMDT should do the same with SDR.

 

[Quillion]

So can someone explain to me why SD Remix does the low-tiers better than PM? Some people have said that, but I don't quite get it.

 

[Mystic-]

They just straight buffed them since they can't do all the fancy stuff PM did to them. They're just beefed up versions of the same character. PM tried to actually fix the characters to work better in a competitive setting through means other than just straight improving already existing stuff. Therefore, people who liked low tiers in melee would enjoy the SD remix versions more since they're justbetter versions of the characters generally

 

[Quillion]

They just straight buffed them since they can't do all the fancy stuff PM did to them. They're just beefed up versions of the same character. PM tried to actually fix the characters to work better in a competitive setting through means other than just straight improving already existing stuff. Therefore, people who liked low tiers in melee would enjoy the SD remix versions more since they're justbetter versions of the characters generally

What fancy stuff are you talking about? I thought they were supposed to recreate most of the animations and properties of Melee in PM.

 

[Deleted member]

What fancy stuff are you talking about? I thought they were supposed to recreate most of the animations and properties of Melee in PM.

They took what was good about a character's moveset in Melee but gave most mid-low tier characters new options to cover some of their weaknesses. For example, Samus can now crawl and can swap beams between Fire and Ice, Kirby's Final Cutter has a variation where Kirby flies forward with the cutter, and Zelda 's Din's Fire functions completely differently and she can cancel grounded Farore's Wind with an air dodge.

As far as I know, characters in SD remix were made faster/stronger, but their moves function pretty much the same way as they did in Melee.

 

[Sorry:(]

Does anyone feel like the Triforce folks are getting too much attention in PM? I am so stoked for 3.5 I had to find fresh pants several times today. However, I think other characters could benefit from as much attention too . . .

 

[Deleted member]

Uh, how exactly do you think they are getting "too much attention." I'm not even sure what that means.

 

[GP&B]

Din's Fire change is definitely one of the most curious changes I've seen. No idea how that's going to work in play (or how Zelda mains feel about it).

Zelda and Ganondorf were really the only ones to get big changes of the bunch (that we know of, not that I expect much beyond adjustments for Link). The other Zelda characters got notice mostly because of Hyrule Castle HD.

 

[Deleted member]

I'm cautiously optimistic about Din's Fire. It's been pretty obvious for a while now that the move was going to receive changes. It certainly looks interesting. I'm reserving judgement until I've had a chance to try it out extensively.

 

[Sorry:(]

I'm likely over-sensitive, but the tri-force characters have been creaming all over everything that has been released recently about PM. The Art Tuesday finale, which actually has me playing ocarina of time now, was just triforce on top of triforce. Zelda and Link have already been running train on peeps, and now Gannon has been exposing himself all over the Project M twitter and the 3.5 trailer. Zelda also, on the twitter part. I like what is being done with Gannon, I just hope other characters from other series are getting the same level of love from the developers that the triforce folks are getting. I have never played Zelda before, and there are cool things to be done with the other characters. I understand much info has not been released yet, I just worry.

 

[Quillion]

PM's "big changes" are both a strength and a weakness of the mod in my opinion (though more of a weakness to me). On one hand it gives them tools that put them up to par with the other characters. But it unfortunately overcomplicates them and heavily raises the entry barrier to the game.

On the other hand, SDR makes all mid-low tier characters as good as the high tiers without being as disruptive as PM.

I'm likely over-sensitive, but the tri-force characters have been creaming all over everything that has been released recently about PM. The Art Tuesday finale, which actually has me playing ocarina of time now, was just triforce on top of triforce. Zelda and Link have already been running train on peeps, and now Gannon has been exposing himself all over the Project M twitter and the 3.5 trailer. Zelda also, on the twitter part. I like what is being done with Gannon, I just hope other characters from other series are getting the same level of love from the developers that the triforce folks are getting. I have never played Zelda before, and there are cool things to be done with the other characters. I understand much info has not been released yet, I just worry.

GANNON BANNED!

 

[Quillion]

Here's a little video of featuring two fan-favorite but tournament unfavorites of vMelee of an actual SDR tournament. You can see for yourself what's different and what's not.

 

[x260houtori]

I do feel that the buffs to ganon in PM have made the character harder for new players to handle, But from a competitive standpoint I actually enjoy the falco v ganon match-up with a friend now because ganon is a much bigger threat. I do not think he needs banned. I'd simply compare him to a grappler in Street Fighter in the sense that you need to be very technical and precise with inputs or he/the grappler will punish you huge. I really enjoy it tbh. But I can see how new players would find him overpowered.

 

[Quillion]

I already said, but I'll explain in more detail or w/e
Reducing variety means there's a smaller pool of people your gameplay appeals to because you are restricting the number of optimal players to character archetypes that are known to be successful, for the sake of balance. You also homogenize matchups reducing the game's replay value and longevity. If everybody's DD/WDs become good, you lose the opportunity to give those characters as much leeway in other departments for fear of causing balance problems. A really blatant example is characters with static space control. Characters like Snake, Diddy, Zelda, ROB and a few others to lesser extents can't exist, because you've already buffed everyone to be fast, strong, mobile and combo well. Diddy's like 3 lf those things and still controls static space really well, and I'd make the argument he's a top 5 or top 10 character. So then you create a balance problem like Diddy, by trying to have enough variety and still having all characters feel fast and responsive; or you severely restrict character variety; or the third option, you have characters that don't feel artificially as fluid because you didn't crank up the numbers on their running speed, aerial mobility, etc but you still have those characters to appeal to players who want a more unique experience, and you also appeal to other players by giving them opportunities to play more unique matchups occasionally without making them feel like they got ****ed by a superior character.
Holy run-on sentence batman

Reducing variety also creates a greater struggle with balancing.

I've seen people who exclusively do Melee feel that PMDT isn't doing as good an ideal job with balancing because of the "variety" approach as PM still has an (using Smogon's tier definitions) Overused, Underused, and Rarelyused divide.

The people over at the SDR thread (minus one of the developers, Ripple/88nailyH) have agreed that even if they could change the animations, they still want to keep it close to Melee, and if more progress is made, to reserve more "unique" things to other projects.

 

[Crulex Crystallite]

Reducing variety also creates a greater struggle with balancing.

I've seen people who exclusively do Melee feel that PMDT isn't doing as good an ideal job with balancing because of the "variety" approach as PM still has an (using Smogon's tier definitions) Overused, Underused, and Rarelyused divide.

The people over at the SDR thread (minus one of the developers, Ripple/88nailyH) have agreed that even if they could change the animations, they still want to keep it close to Melee, and if more progress is made, to reserve more "unique" things to other projects.

I feel like the under or over usage in PM characters stems from other things, not just whether or not characters are deemed good or horrible, broken etc. PM hasn't been going on for as long and hasn't had the same amount of players as melee. You have a smaller pool from a smaller number of players in a smaller time frame playing PM than Melee. There's still plenty of metagame to breach and still plenty of fresh blood to enter to scene as well.

I think SDR and PM are both incredible though, both offer various types of gameplay and approach the changes differently. Melee went the more natural route, buffing up the metrics without changing the mechanics (melee plays like melee) whereas PM took the theme approach, giving unique mechanics/gameplay to characters while maintaining the basic advanced mechanics of melee.

Both have strong ambitions and aren't in contention.