Release Candidate 2

[Shell]

We need to get RC2 out asap. Here are some small fixes we should discuss and likely include:

Wolf
-Nair needs reworked, tweaked at least

Ness
-Fair angle lowered 10 degrees, increased KB and/or SDI-factor
-Anything else? D-throw?

Samus
-Fix crash
-Remove jab change

Zamus
-Fix crash

Luigi
-Magus's Down-B tweaks

Falcon
-Magus's Nair / Side-B etc. tweaks

Lucas
-Zair hits frame 10 from 7 (will upload)

Ganon
-Cape says Choke initial grab might need to be toned down. I'll need to test it asap.

Boozer
-Fixed physics

Yoshi
-DJC bug?


Discuss.

 

[Team Giza]

Ness
-Fair angle lowered 10 degrees, increased KB and/or SDI-factor
-Anything else? D-throw?

Agreed on all this but I think getting rid of both is a huge hit to Ness. Fair not comboing well makes it so it really limits what was making him too good in the first place. I agree to making D-throw not combo as well and fair not combo much at all when DI'd right. But I want to up the shield damage to Ness' fair along with the nerfs.

Samus
-Fix crash
-Remove jab change

Thanks.

Ganon
-Cape says Choke initial grab might need to be toned down. I'll need to test it asap.

It does. Its a little to large or something and it makes it so sometimes Ganondorf does this tiny but awkward looking slide backwards.

Falcon
-Magus's Nair / Side-B etc. tweaks

Does this include a down throw change?

Luigi

Do we know how to remove hitstun resistance?

edit: Somehow I skipped the ASAP at the beginning. Why do we need a new one so soon? Shouldn't we just fix the Samus, Ness, Yoshi glitches for now?

 

[CT Chia]

Uhhhh no?

Unless it includes only fixes for major glitches and nothing else, I'm completely against it.

 

[Shell]

Chibo, while I respect your "argument," the thing is, the longer something remains in a build, especially an official one, the harder it is to remove later.

If you leave many of the above things in for two months or so, things which the majority of players agree need tweaking in some way, not only does it say something about the poor level of testing we do before releasing a Official build, but it makes these things less likely to change in the future.

When tournaments or crew battles are largely skewed (reports of Ness and Falcon), things are likely more exaggerated than they really are, but there's still a grain of truth in them.

I'm against making big changes every couple weeks, but the things I listed won't force anyone to relearn a character or a match-up, they just make small but effective adjustments -- no fox JC shines etc.

Finally, why do you think we called it "Release Candidate 1?" As far as I'm aware, that wasn't a release candidate for Gold, as we're planning on making a couple to a several game changes, but rather a release candidate for 5.0, implying that we would fix up the reported bugs and get RC2 out.

@Giza

Were you serious or sarcastic about thanking me for Samus..? Anyways, here's Magus's changes from the other thread:

I adjusted some things to test out and played around with them a bit last week. Seemed pretty good.

http://www.mediafire.com/?muymtmruzyt

[COLOR=Silver][FONT=Lucida Console][B]Captain Falcon[/B]
Side-B         38->50 KBG; 62->68 BKB
B-Air (Weak)   55->50 Angle
N-Air          85->90 KBG; Foot hitbox shifted inwards 1.5 units
U-Throw        IASA: 40->41
Dash Attack    65->55 Angle on strong hit

[B]Luigi[/B]
Down-B (All)   X-Offset: 8.333/4.167->6.500/3.250
Down-B (Link)  2->1 Dmg; 8->4 Refresh Rate; 56/48->65/55 BKB; 175->179 Angle; 1.00x->0.75x Hitlag; 0.80x->0.60x SDI
Down-B (Final) 115->108 KBG; 60->90 BKB

[B]MK/Kirby[/B]
Nado           50/90/80/80->0/0/0/0 Shield Dmg; 100/100/45/45->0/0/0/0 KBG; 0/0/0/0->50/90/36/36 BKB; 0.70x->1.00x SDI[/FONT][/COLOR]

-CF's side-b actually like... sends them somewhere at 0% and also stops comboing into knee on lighter/floaty characters when the damage gets up there.
-Lowered the angle on weak b-air... again lol
-N-air more growth and the foot hitbox leaves the tip slightly unprotected. Going beyond this will look a bit odd. Could maybe instead try giving it TP so it won't be able to cancel out projectile hitboxes.
-The IASA on u-throw was only upped by 3 before. This removes 1/3 of that.
-Dash attack shouldn't be leading into any knees if they DI in some sort of away direction.

-Luigi's grounded down-b doesn't cover his hands anymore. I don't really see how it could be 'beating' everything before as it did 2 dmg and wasn't disjointed beyond where his hands could reach. If it was beating anything out the other attack just wasn't coming out in time. In any case, this gives very slightly more time to do that, and some potential to possibly hit his hands for attacks that can't simply overpower the hitboxes in damage. Anything at all that's out there that touches the hitboxes will clank/beat the move as usual.
-To keep them from sliding out of range more often while caught in the move due to having less horizontal range, I cut the refresh rate in half (it uses refreshing spec off collisions) and halved the damage on each hit, so after the 1st hit it connects twice as often, and adjusted the hitlag/SDI accordingly.
-Increased the BKB of the last hit drastically and lowered KBG so it no longer combos fasterfallers/strings fatties into u-tilt(s) at low damage (this was pretty dumb imo).

-MK and Kirby's tornados I converted to use BKB instead of KBG-based set KB. The lack of tumble and KB it was giving large and heavy characters gave no hope of escape, while on lighter characters it caused tumble and even caused them to fall out randomly on their own. Hopefully this change strikes some balance between the two.

 

[shanus]

I'll work on Ness fair when I get the chance, but lowering the angle on that bad boy is still gonna self-link like whoa.

Thats why I think its better to link upwards into an uair or bair instead of ******** fairx3

 

[CT Chia]

It's just the fact that we said it will be around for months and here we are people are already wanting to change it, and it's not just glitches, it's new move mechanics as you suggested some changed to Falcon and Ness among others.

A lot of people were really put off from the constant updates, the game kept changing everytime they went to play it. Even further, the nightlies or weeklies were dubbed as experimental and not standard, yet whenever tourneys tried to use the official build and not nightly/weekly people complained. Now here we are with a release we said would be around for a few months minimum, and it's on it's way to being changed now.

How are we so sure these are the changes we want to stick with? We're going to change this and make RC2, then immediately think of things to change (especially concerning RC2 changes imo) and then make an RC3 right away.

If we're going to make some changes, why not make more? From all the recent stage discussion there is plenty that we would like to change, but won't and can't in the time being since we're kind of locked into this whole RC1 phase atm. If we go ahead and make RC2, then why not add the stage things? However by doing so it nullifies the stage votes for any stages that would be changed that have been voted on so far and it would have to be re-done. Not to mention people already practicing for future tourneys.

Changes are constantly being made with very little proof or reason. We also have BtL2 announced for using the RC1 on November 14th, and I guarantee you people are already practicing for that. Not to mention with online registration, people are already laying down money with full intention that it's RC1. What if for some reason they don't like RC2 and they don't want to enter anymore? Tough luck.

Even with all this in mind though, it's going back on what we said, RC1 sticking around for a few months. Take the time to collect some data. Make RC updates more "updated" than just changing a move here and there. Collect data for a while, make some updates, test them 100% only in the WBR without releasing them, tweak as needed, then release a proper RC2 release.

If you guys never give ample time to test a build then you will never settle on a final decision. Nothing will every be 100% perfect, realize this. And everytime you modify every small thing (even the tiny things in this proposed update), a lot more than what you expect will change.

Give it time.

 

[GHNeko]

I agree wholeheartedly with Chibo.

Considering this set as only been out for so long, we can't simply go back on our word after telling EVERYONE that we're leaving this set sit for a while. That Snake bug, imo, was pushing it and wouldn't of happened if we tested changes more thoroughly. People are already adjusting to RC1. People are practicing RC1. All the discussion happening at the moment on both SWF and AiB are based off RC1.

We need to let this set sit as we intended and as we promise. We acknowledge what the problems are, so let's just fix them in BR sets rather than just releasing a new set.

People already know that there are going to be pretty big changes when the next set comes around, so they can prepare themselves one we give a date in upcoming months.

The only thing that should be released, if anything at all, are bug fixes ie Samus/Zamus crash bug and the DJC bug for Ness/Yoshi. That's it.

Let this set grow so we can get superior data on what to change when the time comes. But for now. Let's NOT go back on our word. :/

 

[JCaesar]

Chibo do you really think people are going to drop from your tournament if we make a few heavily agreed-upon changes? If anything, it's the other way around. I know some people are being discouraged from Brawl+ by the silliness in the current build.

A few additional suggestions:

Remove the PKT endlag speedup from Ness. The thing is nigh unpunishable even on block unless you're standing right next to Ness, and it has so much hitstun that it combos ridiculously well. PKT never struck me as a projectile that should be so effective at offense. He already has another great offensive projectile with great rewards when it lands.

Add more endlag to Falco's utilt or give it more base. The IASA is fine but as it stands right now, it can still self-combo 3 or 4 times at low %s (which is what we were trying to get rid of) and it just looks dumb at how spammable and safe it is.

There are a thousand other things I could say but I do want 5.0 to remain stable. I just think these in particular are fairly big issues.

Edit: Oh and more KBG on Squirtle's uthrow so it isn't a guaranteed uair kill on most of the cast under 100%.

 

[GHNeko]

Chibo do you really think people are going to drop from your tournament if we make a few heavily agreed-upon changes? If anything, it's the other way around. I know some people are being discouraged from Brawl+ by the silliness in the current build.

Half off those people discouraged by silliness in Brawl+ haven't learned to get around it. Over half of the things I found dumb when RC1 came out, I eventually learned how to deal with it with some asking around and some practice. I still think some of those things are dumb and should go, but its less than what I initially wanted to be changed.

Also, if people KNOW something is going to be changed then they wont be discouraged from Brawl+ because they know their worries are being taken care off.

People KNOW Ness Fair is going to be toned down, those who ***** about it are either *****ing about something else or simply silent and satisfied.

There is no real urgency to release a new set so soon. If anything, it'll more like a nightly than an official. :/

 

[JCaesar]

Well it would be nice if some of the more obviously silly things were fixed before the biggest Brawl+ tourney ever next month. I'm not saying go all out with tweaks that everyone is asking for. Just the really obvious, dumb things which are widely agreed upon.

 

[GHNeko]

I personally think only glitches/bugs should be fixed and released before the time.

We have a tendency to put out sets specifically for tourneys and those sets have more issues than the nightly.

 

[Shell]

Exactly... we put out an official set and you acknowledge that it has issues whose solutions are pretty widely agreed upon, yet you don't want to change them?

I agree with JC that I've seen far more (at least more vocal) people complaining about the few balance issues in RC1 than complaining about the possibility of them being changed / fixed.

 

[Magus420]

This thing should never have been called 'official/RC/lolgold' to begin with. Not sure what happened to the idea of releasing it as a pre-official public nightly for a short period to allow better testing of the huge amount of changes and sort out any problems before going stable, but it was rushed into that status and ended up with a few glaring issues not very characteristic of a polished build.

Anyway, add airdodges to the list. Their animations need to be rebuilt like the sidesteps to actually allow the new inv duration to be relevant for some characters who have huge z-axis pseudo dodges during the times they're supposed to be hittable like the rest of the cast.

Is Ness' PK Flash speedup in the pac functioning? I don't know if CountKaiser was expecting to see it in the txt and it wasn't there or if it really does not work. Also, his d-throw should be fine as is when f-air is properly reworked, and seconding JC that PKT1 speedup is a bit ridiculous and should be removed.

 

[Veril]

We also have BtL2 announced for using the RC1 on November 14th, and I guarantee you people are already practicing for that. Not to mention with online registration, people are already laying down money with full intention that it's RC1.

...

Even with all this in mind though, it's going back on what we said, RC1 sticking around for a few months. Take the time to collect some data. Make RC updates more "updated" than just changing a move here and there. Collect data for a while, make some updates, test them 100% only in the WBR without releasing them, tweak as needed, then release a proper RC2 release.

This. This says everything that really is important. The glitches should be removed of course, as they are purely detrimental to gameplay. The balancing changes... well... those can and should wait until the major scheduled tournaments occur and we've had more time to test. Personally, I'd really like more time to collect data as well. Between school and work, my time is limited and I know this is true for many of us. What Chibo said about practicing for BtL2, I, and the people in my area who may also be attending, are all practicing using this set.

My little town, of no great note, covers nearly the whole roster (in regards to mains/seconds). I've gotten them to switch over to B+, hacked many systems, and been driven to exhaustion pointing out and explaining the changes we've made. We all love it dearly, and when I announced that the 5.0 set would remain static as far as balance tweeks go, there was an extremely positive response from this player base. I personally am elated because now I can test without worrying if my data will be useless in the next week. I would feel like I was betraying their trust if we started making changes so soon after the release of 5.0

Give it time (x2).

This thing should never have been called 'official/RC/lolgold' to begin with.

An excellent point. BUT... The fact is, these labels have all been attached to it.

 

[shanus]

however PK flash is now, its fine.

 

[CT Chia]

1. I think relying on PUBLIC nightlies/weeklies/etc for testing was a bad idea. People got attached to these, and completely forgot about the official versions. At SNES when I couldn't use the latest Brawl+ cause we didn't have enough SD cards for all of the systems, my first response was: ok, I'll use the official 4.1 release. It's an official release, and doesn't use the PACs. Nightlies aren't recommended for tourney play right? When I announced that the opinion of tourney entrants was AWFUL. I was essentially forced to find and located the latest non-PAC version of Brawl+, because people were accustomed to the new changes.
Also in very early BtL2 planning, I somewhat jokingly said in the ToS thread that if a new official release doesn't come out, I'm gonna use 4.1 for BtL2 since it's still the newest official release. Despite it practically being a joke (because until RC1 my favorite version was 4.1) there was instant backlash, even from members of the WBR, for not using the updated weeklies. The whole idea and purpose of the testing sets was lost. I'm glad we're done with those, it was one of the biggest mistakes to the project imo.

2. If you want to make these balance changes.... uhhh.... why? What makes you think Ness' fair is too good or Falcon combos too awesome (told ya lol). Why weren't these things brought to the table BEFORE we released RC1. We weren't in any rush, BtL2 (the main reason for getting this RC1 out the door imo since it's the only important B+ thing on the horizon) wasn't for another 2 months around the time we were releasing RC1. Even still, weeks after being released, we don't have the proper changelists and such to provide the public. It's just messy imo.
There is no proof behind these changes besides personal opinion essentially. Get me some tourney results. Get me some vids of top level players. We don't have them. What if BtL2 passes with this set and no Ness main even breaks top 8? What about top 12? What if we see Fox take 6 out of the 8 top places. Are we gonna forget about the Ness changes being proposed now and switch to targeting Fox? Even one tournament is not enough for proof imo.


I'm sure you all notice how I go inactive for some periods of time back here, and tbh it's all just random periods of being discontent with Brawl+, which I was for a while. What brought me back this time to loving it is that we finally reached RC1. I didn't have to worry about playing a new game every single week, I didn't have to worry about updating all the time, or re-learning all the matchups or even my own characters. It was all a big turn off for me ever since the nightlies started.

Edit: Pracitcally the same thing happened with Cape's thread on RC1 change opinions. Though his thread was a lil more change request oriented and garnered a lot more "too early" response, it's essentially the same thing. People have to learn that we can't go back on our promises for no real reason.

 

[shanus]

I think part of it is that about 4 tourneys happened since RC1 chibo, and i think the entire community feels that ness and falcon were overdone across all four tourneys. Not much requires changing in terms of balancing (literally ness fair and falcon nair), but I frankly don't care either way it goes lol

The main thing is bugs:

We have a fixed samus pac (with a less ******** jab too, that was stupid)
Still need wolf fixed nair & upB
Yoshi DJC float bug.

 

[Revven]

Ness Fair could easily be fixed by just a knockback increase on the very last hit. Either that or put the SDIability at 1.00x and then change the angle again as shanus said above.

 

[Shell]

Yeah, BtL2 wasn't the only tourney we were trying to get a set out for -- there were at least two tourneys the weekend immediately after release and two more closely following it, as shanus pointed out.

In retrospect I don't really know whether it was best that we pumped out a rough 5.0 RC1 for the tournies, but 4.1 official was unbearably old, as you pointed out. It was a choice between two evils, and I think we made the right choice, but realized that some things might need to be touched up.

If you're so worried about people boycotting BtL2 due to a more polished set, why don't you suggest some of the more agreed upon (Ness / Falcon / Wolf / Bugs) changes here in the thread and see what people think? If people other than Ness and Falcon mains don't want the changes I'll be genuinely surprised, but I won't argue about it any more. And hey, who knows, maybe people will respond positively to it.

 

[JCaesar]

Chibo please at least try and keep up with what's going on before making broad generalizations like that. You are so out of touch it's not even funny.

 

[Deleted member]

why are we even trying to do stuff like this mere weeks after the release?

next time actually work out a build better before we call it an RC. just focus on technical limitations, bugs and the ruleset for now. I'm sure you can survive some weeks without having to change stuff, right?

 

[CT Chia]

I'm not worried about ppl boycotting it, that was just a point I was trying to make. What it all comes down to is that people are trying to make balance changes now when we said we couldn't for months.

 

[goodoldganon]

I agree with Chibo. Fix the bugs and freezes but balance should be left alone unless for something gamebreaking. Nothing except maybe the Ness change would address a gamebreaking issue.

 

[RyokoYaksa]

This build in general was just done rather sloppily. People making changes over changes, and we had little to no meetings to actually filter anything out.

One example is Ness Fair SDI being reduced, but then that stupid auto-link angle was added to it afterwards.

Also, CF receiving many things for the sake of it.

 

[Team Giza]

@Giza

Were you serious or sarcastic about thanking me for Samus..?

C: No sarcasm.

I'll work on Ness fair when I get the chance, but lowering the angle on that bad boy is still gonna self-link like whoa.

Thats why I think its better to link upwards into an uair or bair instead of ******** fairx3

I think the idea is making the base knockback go so far that it can't be linked into anything.

 

[Veril]

why are we even trying to do stuff like this mere weeks after the release?

next time actually work out a build better before we call it an RC. just focus on technical limitations, bugs and the ruleset for now. I'm sure you can survive some weeks without having to change stuff, right?

Yes. We should wait until after BtL2 imo.

That said.

It would really help if we had actual established principles and guidelines for when a move deserves buffs or nerfs. In regards to Ness's f-air. I think we've established that the ability of a move to combo into itself many times is undesirable. Ness needs no buff to counter balance this. The idea that we need to balance all new nerfs with buffs is ******** since we've already substantially improved him.

What makes fair (or similar aerial) a problem move?:
-overwhelmingly internally unbalanced (related to the rest of his moveset) cause...
-combos into itself for massive damage across the cast
-very safe
-Swiss army move: can space, damage, and link into KOs.
-limited ability to escape with DI and SDI!

What is the easiest and best fix for this?
-improved SDI capacity: This is a skill-dependent fix, the best kind by far. It also doesn't require a nerf so much as the removal of a buff.


General Principle I would suggest related to this:
-Removal of buffs does not require a new buff to balance things out. If the character in question is not considered weak (and Ness certainly isn't), a new buff would be clear character favoritism.
-character favoritism is BAD: "cough" Falcon gets how many buffs now?

I think the idea is making the base knockback go so far that it can't be linked into anything.

No. That would be layering a nerf on top of buffs. It would also hurt the move far more than the SDI fix (which would give more options to the defending player).

 

[_Yes!_]

I skimmed through this quickly. Just wanted to add my two cents.

A huge reason why NJ refuses to catch onto this game is because of the trigger happy nature to change the game with these updates.

 

[leafgreen386]

There's a very good reason I've been calling the next set a "patch" rather than a "brand new set" when posting in the RC1 thread (I hate you guys for calling this RC1 btw). We've said that this set is here to stay, which means that all except the most crucial of fixes should be left out to just let the metagame develop. We've made a lot of changes over little stuff in the past, and we're finally stopping doing that. However, moves like ness's fair are just as much of a "bug" as the yoshi DJC glitch. They're an error we made while coding this, and it didn't work out as we thought it would. Notice how it's only addressing changes we made this build, rather than adding whole new things. We're simply fixing things to be the way we had intended them to be when we originally released the set.

tl;dr: If we call it a patch that's fixing bugs people will be a lot more receptive to it than if we call it a whole new set. Official set 5.01, imo.

We can think about releasing stage updates in the second patch, since those won't be directly changing the characters. We will have to make sure they're well tested, though.

 

[shanus]

I used to think patching in balance changes (i.e. only a few right now) wouldn't be met with such hate, but reading the forum posts, I think bug fixes are the only solid way to go now till at least BtL2....