Scar on the Melee vs Brawl debate: What does competitive really mean?

[SynikaL]

Christ, I'm NOT saying At's were autowins! I'm saying that they MADE UP for less than perfect mindgames.

What an idiot.


Seriously, this is what every Brawl supporter looks like to me. Mindless scrubs that know nothing about anything, dissolving in a pool of naivete crafted by guileless visions of acceptance through Brawl's accessible nature.


I hope Brawl eats your babies.


-Kimo

 

[FishkeeperTimmay!]

OMG people, Im NOT saying Techniques make you UNSTOPPABLE! NOR am I saying that you can use AT's to make mind games obsolete. Im saying that they made mind games less needed, as your pressuring tactics become MUCH great with the speed AT's give.

You need good approaches to get into someones space. I know this. I attended touraments just like the rest of you. You NEED mind games. Pros in Melee HAD these mind games. But what else did they have? Ridiculously good technical skillz. They all needed them for the extra speed and spacing they gave. They also had the mindgames to apply them, but there was NO way a profession could win ANY MLG tourny without using short hops, l cancels, fox trots, dash dances and to a lesser extent, washdashing.

I quote Fox often because of his tier placement. Fox was at the top of the tier list for his TECHNICAL capabilities. His wavedash gave him the most options, his tricks to improve speed gave him unmatchable pressuing abilities, his JC shines gave him much more powerful approaches.

What was Fox without AT's? Nothing. Without SPEED in Melee, a character was nothing. AT's gave characters speed. Thus, by taking out the AT's in Brawl, you bring the strategy back, and give ALL the characters a chance to succeed.

 

[LegendofLink]

Melee was a competitive masterpiece. There were so many options for movement beyond the simple run, walk, and jump, that it was simply staggering. The one thing that everyone in this thread on both sides of this argument are forgetting is that Melee's greatness was an ACCIDENT!

Melee was never intended to be the amazing thing that it was, but a highly abusable physics engine made so much more possible . Brawl is also not intended to be an extremely competitive game, but it has a "better" physics engine that eliminates much of what made Melee so competitive.

Brawl probably won't be as competitive as Melee , but for what competitiveness it has, it will have an equally diverse metagame, only in a different way. Melee had 26 characters. Out of all of those only 5 or 6 really had any tournament potential due to their ability to abuse the physics of the game more than the rest. Brawl, on the other hand has 36 (or 38 depending on how you count Poke'mon Trainer) characters in it and nearly all of them have potential, creating an extremely diverse metagame.

tl;dr version: Melee is more competitive than Brawl, but Brawl is the game that Nintendo intended to make: a fun, semi-competitive party/fighter game that nearly anyone can pick up and play.

 

[Cactuar]

@Trebor: What does this have to do with the point of this topic.

 

[Radical Dreamer]

washdashing.

You sure know what you're talking about?

Fox still has a lot going for him even with just dashdancing. See Masashi. Pretty much the only one he couldn't beat in Japan with his Fox was Tani.

 

[KonradGabreil]

An agreeable post legendoflink, though there are a couple tweaks I would do.
Though by masterpiece, you mean masterpiece for pros.
And I disagree, any of Nintendo's actual games are all meant to be amazing.
I adored Melee, like I said, but it isn't quite on the same level as Ocarina of Time, not for me anyway. ;]

 

[Corigames]

What was Fox without AT's? Nothing. Without SPEED in Melee, a character was nothing. AT's gave characters speed. Thus, by taking out the AT's in Brawl, you bring the strategy back, and give ALL the characters a chance to succeed.

So, without speed, a character is nothing. AT's gave characters speed.

So, by transitive property, Brawl's characters are nothing.

 

[Nobie]

I have the funny feeling that even if "advanced techniques" were never discovered, you would still all be here having played melee competitively for years.

 

[KonradGabreil]

I think he wasn't trying to bring Brawl into the picture there.

 

[OddCrow]

If you really don't like Brawl then please go play Melee....no one will complain/care and neither will you.
Arguing to people who like a game is like punching a brick wall, you can punch as hard as you want in all the right places but it doesn't matter, the wall doesn't care and will respond with the same thing everytime, hurting your hand and your head (mentally).

I believe, and everyone with a sense of intelligence will too, that Melee has a much faster playstyle, a better sense of combo/juggling, and more advanced techniques which make play fresher and staler at the same time. But Brawl is new, shiny, balanced, slower, has new and awesome characters, and IS BUTTLOADS OF FUN

 

[DRaGZ]

This thread makes me sigh more and more each time I read it.

I might pass out from the over-sighing.

 

[SynikaL]

I have the funny feeling that even if "advanced techniques" were never discovered, you would still all be here having played melee competitively for years.

That's a testament to Melee more than anything else. Scrubs think Melee's power came from these asnine "Advanced Techs", but those are mere icing. Melee's base mechanics are robust to the tilt point. I played Smash 64 yesterday and I was quite literally taken by shock at the jump Melee truly is, gameplay wise. I hadn't played the game in years, so I had no clue. I truly believe Melee was designed to be competitive -- no fighting game meant to be strictly party flavor is designed with that kind of gameplay leap. Sakurai clearly wanted Melee to stand up to any traditional fighting game when he created that game.

Conversely, Brawl is an undeniable regression in almost every facet, save the Shield Cancel system -- that's the only mechanic in the game that truly shows a progressive design philosophy. Like Brawl if you want to, but anyone that thinks the game is competitive in its design is straight stupid.


-Syn

 

[Corigames]

Ok, can someone at least tell me why brawl extremists say that Brawl is, and I quote, "More Balanced"?

Please.

 

[bmagaziner]

I think a point that hasnt been specifically raised, which also lends itself in favor of melee, is not directly related to competition. I highly enjoy embracing my competitive spirit, and playing melee competitively and with the intention to progress. However, what i enjoyed most, was the degree of creativity that could be expressed through the direct relationship that could be formed with a character. This obviously pertains to AT's, as they furthered the degree in which a character could more closely become an extension of your creativity. In the end, ill hardly remember the matches ive won or lost, but i will remember feeling like my play was expressing how i felt at the time, or when this line of thought led to something new, unexpected and extremely rewarding happening, that would have been difficult to stumble upon any other way. If any of you play music, or specifically play music with other people, im sure you can and have drawn parallels between the experience of playing music in different moods/mindsets versus that of playing smash. I cant say that ive felt this way about any other video game, much less that many other activities ive engaged in, in my life.

What I'm trying to say is that, this encouragement to build new intuition, is simply not present in brawl. There is seldom a reward for consciously engaging in the difficult, or the unknown. I have no interest in being rewarded for dumbing down the direction that i want to take my game, which as far is ive felt seems to be the logic behind much of my time spent with brawl.

 

[SynikaL]

I think a point that hasnt been specifically raised, which also lends itself in favor of melee, is not directly related to competition. I highly enjoy embracing my competitive spirit, and playing melee competitively and with the intention to progress. However, what i enjoyed most, was the degree of creativity that could be expressed through the direct relationship that could be formed with a character. This obviously pertains to AT's, as they furthered the degree in which a character could more closely become an extension of your creativity. In the end, ill hardly remember the matches ive won or lost, but i will remember feeling like my play was expressing how i felt at the time, or when this line of thought led to something new, unexpected and extremely rewarding happening, that would have been difficult to stumble upon any other way. If any of you play music, or specifically play music with other people, im sure you can and have drawn parallels between the experience of playing music in different moods/mindsets versus that of playing smash. I cant say that ive felt this way about any other video game, much less that many other activities ive engaged in, in my life.

What I'm trying to say is that, this encouragement to build new intuition, is simply not present in brawl. There is seldom a reward for consciously engaging in the difficult, or the unknown. I have no interest in being rewarded for dumbing down the direction that i want to take my game, which as far is ive felt seems to be the logic behind much of my time spent with brawl.

I thought I was the only one that saw Melee that way. I have to ask: do you play any sports?

For a long time I actually wanted to write an article/blog post about this very aspect of Melee. SSBM is by far the most expressive video game I have ever played. My playstyle is my own, and anyone that has played me will tell you I play like no one else. That's because I literally spent years crafting an expressive style simply because Melee's mechanics allowed me the freedom. This gave Melee a very distinct and ethereal, yet very tangible quality I've had yet to indentify in any other fighting game community: culture.

Prior to Youtube's proliferation, the feeling was much stronger however. Different parts of FL approached Melee in very different ways -- South FL was known for the tech skill. Georgia was only a state away, but I could only lol whenever I got a chance to see them play, because I always felt Georgia approached the game in an awkward, but effective way. I always felt West Coast/Cali areas produced the most fun to watch playstyles (Ken, Isai, Spectre) while, East Coast/Maryland/Virginia were strictly utilitarian (Azen, Husband, Chu etc.).

I could literally right an article about this, but I don't have the time (maybe someday). I just had to quote that post, because that is something I greatly sympathize with and Brawl will doubtfully foster the same sentiments merely because it lacks the creative freedom.

This is one of the defining characteristics of Melee that literally make it much, much more than just a game for me. It was an outlet. A creative one. A competitive one. Arrgh, I need to stop, now.



-Kimo

 

[TheKneeOfJustice]

To adress some points:

Character similarities: Most characters handle the same. There is very little difference between the fastest and slowest fallers. Therefore, style wise, your movement habits between characters won't change too much. Compared to melee, some people had almost unrecognizable styles between characters. So yes, many characters in this game can be played similar, sans the obvious differences in movesets, but when you factor in projectiles or RAR approaches, you being to notice a lot of similarities.

Muscle Memory in Melee: Really? This was an issue that kept people from competing? Then you obviously gave up in the first five minutes. Wavedashing can be picked up in five minutes, and perfected over the course of a few days. SHFFL motions, L-cancels in particular become so common that you should be getting them almost every time within the span of a week at worst. People limited themselves by not actually trying to better themselves. This is their fault, not that of the AT's.

Brawl is more mind game oriented because there aren't death Combos: People make it seem like death combos were a) Easy, and b) always inescapable. If you believe either of those, you're ********.

 

[LavisFiend]

...

It will never stop...

Will it...?

 

[Kirby Redux]

i can understand why people are complaining about brawl: its not as competitive, its not as deep, etc. However, I do believe that even so, Brawl (at least for me) is turning out to be a really good game. As an overall just average player in melee, its a real relief to not have to worry about AT's all the time (I only bought the game last year in September). I can play how i felt melee should have been played: with more tactical movements while not relying on Advanced Tactics to get you there. I have to say, i feel that i am much better at Brawl than I am at melee simply for the reason that for me, i have someone to play with all of the time, rather than pwning lvl 9 computer players all of the time. I am not trying to defend Brawl as more competitive or better than melee, i just am stating my opinion that Brawl has a much better multiplayer capability over melee, and it is a more, aerial based game than melee was. This is especially important to me because, as a kirby main, i spend a lot of time in the air. As AT's develop from the game mechanics in brawl, as they have been lately, Brawl could become much more of a competitive game than it is currently. I also think it is safe to say that Brawl will me a much more aerial based competitive game over melee, as it was mostly fought on the ground with most characters. It will take some time to figure everything there is to figure out about brawl, but we will get there. I can understand why people say it is not as competitive, but it may be competitive in a different way (aerially). Yeah, i guess tahts all i got to say :D

 

[JFox]

/sidetrack

Seriously, Fox's shine isn't his most broken move. His upsmash is. His uthrow is a close second. Not that those are his best moves, but they definitely are his most broken.

Fox is easily one of the best characters even without the shine. The shine simply has many uses, none of which are broken or unavoidable. In fact, most of the uses can be easily substituted had the shine not been in his arsenal. His jab game is easily fast enough to substitute the interuptibility that that shine provides when shffl'ing. (In fact I often nair a shield and than use jab, than shine...) His shinespike is often very useless in MANY matchups, or turns into a guessing game at best. And the shine as a combo only reliably combos into grabs and upsmash's (the two moves which I said were more broken than the shine are simply made possible by the shine) His infinite's are all able to be smash DI'd except against a wall. (not to mention the fact that his shine has 0 combo ability against more than half the cast cuz it either knocks them down or knocks them too far)

Yeah, Fox is mainly top tier because he is fast running speed wise, while his moves (nair dair) lack much lag allowing him to exploit his speed with and make up for the lack of range. That plus he is extremely reliable at KO'ing his opponent with his two most broken moves- usmash or uthrow/uair. Oh and cuz you can play him both offensively and defensively by exploiting his very fast SHL and good dash dance game. Fox top tier really because he is always able to adapt to the situation. Simple as that. Shine just helps adapt, but its not essential.

/end sidetrack

 

[Corigames]

People act like melee tournament players said you couldn't play melee casually. What you do in YOUR house with YOUR friends and family doesn't matter. None of that matter. All the "advanced" stuff like the ATs and mindgames was only a necessity in tournament play. So what's the problem in having them in? It's not like melee didn't sell a couple copies. I'm pretty **** sure it was a best seller throughout the entire gamecube life. wow, you can wavedash. Could you move without it? YES, YES YOU COULD! there was walking, running, and rolling. You could get around without it. So what's the point in taking it out if you didn't cripple people who didn't know what it is or could do it, especially when they don't even care about tournaments?

That's what I don't get.

 

[Demon Kirby]

...

It will never stop...

Will it...?

No . . . pretty sure it won't.

I'll be coming back a year from now and still see people arguing, I bet.

At this point, it's not even arguing any more. It's two sides chucking out their ideas while hardly acknowledging each others' thoughts.

Mostly true. There's some intelligence left in this debate, but I feel every comment or argument has already been stated, and continuing this would just be a repeat of what we've already been discussing.

I'ma go revive AZ's thread now.

 

[DRaGZ]

At this point, it's not even arguing any more. It's two sides chucking out their ideas while hardly acknowledging each others' thoughts.

 

[Mechageo]

anyone that thinks the game is competitive in its design is straight stupid.

Lets keep this discussion intelligent.

 

[Razorsaw]

.. Wavedashing done in five minutes.

As a universal thing?

...

Right.

 

[Funked]

First post here, please take note i only read the first post and the last few on this page.

A little about myself- I have played multiple fighting games at high level tourney play (Soul Calibur 2 and 3, Tekken 5, NGNT4), and i am also on a sponsored FPS team called puregaming(UT2k4, DOD:S, CS:S, COD4 TF2 etc... www.teampuregaming.com)

Regardless, I've played my fair share of competitive games over the past 10 years and have seen games change for the better and for the worse.

Now I never played melee because i was too focused on other games at the time, but once brawl came out i wasn't really playing anything and I'm waiting for Soul Calibur 4 and Tekken 6 to come out, I thought id read up on some stuff that was in Melee, had some talks with TheCape about melee to help me get prepared for brawl. Low and behold most of the stuff that I had read and was told about, was no longer in the game.

Dash Dancing gone, wavedashing gone, the ability to combo gone, the speed dumbed done, the game seemed like a stripped version of Melee at first. Once I started playing it, I realized it wasn't quite that, but more of the Jump back toward 64 SSB, minus big combos. Not a big deal to me since i never played melee.

Now yes, every game can be competitive, but not every game is good where people would want to play it competitive.

Do i think Brawl is as competitive as Melee? I'd say yes. Does Brawl lack depth? I'd say no, and here is why:

People complain that the game is to campy (its called turtling in every other game). Every game Ive played has turtling in it, its a style of play, people like to be safe and have a risk vs reward be in the favor in almost every situation. Some of the best players in many games are turtles. If you cant get past someone turtling, then you need to rethink your strats vs them, or become a turtle yourself and out turtle them.

Since there is turtling in the game that opens up mind games for the person turtling and the aggressive person. Such as how i am suppose to get into this person, how am i going to force them into a bad situation and capitalize on mistakes made by either person etc...

Since you can air dodge in the air multiple times i this creates amazing depth, because it becomes strictly a mind game, trying to guess when you opponent is going to dodge and punish them for doing it. and on the reverse trying to out guess them and counter.

But of course this is just my opinion and its gone on way to long.

 

[rajendra82]

People act like melee tournament players said you couldn't play melee casually. What you do in YOUR house with YOUR friends and family doesn't matter. None of that matter. All the "advanced" stuff like the ATs and mindgames was only a necessity in tournament play. So what's the problem in having them in? It's not like melee didn't sell a couple copies. I'm pretty **** sure it was a best seller throughout the entire gamecube life. wow, you can wavedash. Could you move without it? YES, YES YOU COULD! there was walking, running, and rolling. You could get around without it. So what's the point in taking it out if you didn't cripple people who didn't know what it is or could do it, especially when they don't even care about tournaments?

That's what I don't get.

If you watched the interview where Sakurai was talking to Iwata, you probably understand why the design decisions that were made in Brawl. Brawl is an online enabled game. If an there are all kinds of ATs to exploit that one can only master with tons of practice, millions of players with a lot of other things to do in real life than just train on Brawl will consistently have a negative experience when they play online, because someone with a lot of time on their hand to master them would always prevail. This could be solved by having a ranking system where the server would match up only similarly ranked players, but Nintendo already had made up their mind that ranking system was bad for everyone except the top players. If you went online and found out that you were in the bottom 5th percentile of skill, how will that make you feel. I for one would quit after trying the game for a few times. That is why they made the game have an easy learning curve and not a lot of gap between the top and the bottom of the skill set. This would allow the lower skilled players feel that they have some chance, and make them keep playing, and tell all their friends about how much fun they keep having. Big N sells a lot of copies, 95% of the public is happy, and top 5% is pissed, but they bought the game on launch day anyway. Capitalism at work. They want everyone to play the game as they intended, not how you can exploit it. Same reason they are going to take out snaking from Mario Kart, and why they kept giving infinite lives to you on Super Mario Galaxy. Only a few have a tolerance level for a lot of frustration from a silly little plaything. And that's all it is ever meant to be, a GAME.

That's why today's sports are nothing like the gladiator contests of ancient Rome. With lives on the line, those were certainly more of a test of skill, and much "deeper" than a mere sport like football. But guess what is being played today due to being more popular?

 

[Mario77]

So... all you are saying is Melee is more competitive than Brawl? -.-
Everyone knows that... but Brawl is much more attractive to the majority =).

 

[Papapaint]

If you watched the interview where Sakurai was talking to Iwata, you probably understand why the design decisions that were made in Brawl. Brawl is an online enabled game. If an there are all kinds of ATs to exploit that one can only master with tons of practice, millions of players with a lot of other things to do in real life than just train on Brawl will consistently have a negative experience when they play online, because someone with a lot of time on their hand to master them would always prevail. This could be solved by having a ranking system where the server would match up only similarly ranked players, but Nintendo already had made up their mind that ranking system was bad for everyone except the top players. If you went online and found out that you were in the bottom 5th percentile of skill, how will that make you feel. I for one would quit after trying the game for a few times. That is why they made the game have an easy learning curve and not a lot of gap between the top and the bottom of the skill set. This would allow the lower skilled players feel that they have some chance, and make them keep playing, and tell all their friends about how much fun they keep having. Big N sells a lot of copies, 95% of the public is happy, and top 5% is pissed, but they bought the game on launch day anyway. Capitalism at work. They want everyone to play the game as they intended, not how you can exploit it. Same reason they are going to take out snaking from Mario Kart, and why they kept giving infinite lives to you on Super Mario Galaxy. Only a few have a tolerance level for a lot of frustration from a silly little plaything. And that's all it is ever meant to be, a GAME.

That's why today's sports are nothing like the gladiator contests of ancient Rome. With lives on the line, those were certainly more of a test of skill, and much "deeper" than a mere sport like football. But guess what is being played today due to being more popular?

Right. That must explain why Halo has over a million unique players per day...

And I don't think that "more fun" was the reason we shifted from the Coliseum to NFL...

 

[LouisLeGros]

First post here, please take note i only read the first post and the last few on this page.

A little about myself- I have played multiple fighting games at high level tourney play (Soul Calibur 2 and 3, Tekken 5, NGNT4), and i am also on a sponsored FPS team called puregaming(UT2k4, DOD:S, CS:S, COD4 TF2 etc... www.teampuregaming.com)

Regardless, I've played my fair share of competitive games over the past 10 years and have seen games change for the better and for the worse.

Now I never played melee because i was too focused on other games at the time, but once brawl came out i wasn't really playing anything and I'm waiting for Soul Calibur 4 and Tekken 6 to come out, I thought id read up on some stuff that was in Melee, had some talks with TheCape about melee to help me get prepared for brawl. Low and behold most of the stuff that I had read and was told about, was no longer in the game.

Dash Dancing gone, wavedashing gone, the ability to combo gone, the speed dumbed done, the game seemed like a stripped version of Melee at first. Once I started playing it, I realized it wasn't quite that, but more of the Jump back toward 64 SSB, minus big combos. Not a big deal to me since i never played melee.

Now yes, every game can be competitive, but not every game is good where people would want to play it competitive.

Do i think Brawl is as competitive as Melee? I'd say yes. Does Brawl lack depth? I'd say no, and here is why:

People complain that the game is to campy (its called turtling in every other game). Every game Ive played has turtling in it, its a style of play, people like to be safe and have a risk vs reward be in the favor in almost every situation. Some of the best players in many games are turtles. If you cant get past someone turtling, then you need to rethink your strats vs them, or become a turtle yourself and out turtle them.

Since there is turtling in the game that opens up mind games for the person turtling and the aggressive person. Such as how i am suppose to get into this person, how am i going to force them into a bad situation and capitalize on mistakes made by either person etc...

Since you can air dodge in the air multiple times i this creates amazing depth, because it becomes strictly a mind game, trying to guess when you opponent is going to dodge and punish them for doing it. and on the reverse trying to out guess them and counter.

But of course this is just my opinion and its gone on way to long.

Not to sound rude, but given from what you have admitted yourself about your experience with melee and smash bros as a whole I don't think your opinion can really be taken for much.

Sure your experience with multiple games on a competitive level is a good thing, but simply reading about some of melee's advanced techniques and having little experience with it really can't replace real play time at a competitive level to really figure out melee's competitive merit and to thus be able to fairly compare it to Brawl.

 

[Cactuar]

First post here, please take note i only read the first post and the last few on this page.

A little about myself- I have played multiple fighting games at high level tourney play (Soul Calibur 2 and 3, Tekken 5, NGNT4), and i am also on a sponsored FPS team called puregaming(UT2k4, DOD:S, CS:S, COD4 TF2 etc... www.teampuregaming.com)

Regardless, I've played my fair share of competitive games over the past 10 years and have seen games change for the better and for the worse.

Now I never played melee because i was too focused on other games at the time, but once brawl came out i wasn't really playing anything and I'm waiting for Soul Calibur 4 and Tekken 6 to come out, I thought id read up on some stuff that was in Melee, had some talks with TheCape about melee to help me get prepared for brawl. Low and behold most of the stuff that I had read and was told about, was no longer in the game.

Dash Dancing gone, wavedashing gone, the ability to combo gone, the speed dumbed done, the game seemed like a stripped version of Melee at first. Once I started playing it, I realized it wasn't quite that, but more of the Jump back toward 64 SSB, minus big combos. Not a big deal to me since i never played melee.

Now yes, every game can be competitive, but not every game is good where people would want to play it competitive.

Do i think Brawl is as competitive as Melee? I'd say yes. Does Brawl lack depth? I'd say no, and here is why:

People complain that the game is to campy (its called turtling in every other game). Every game Ive played has turtling in it, its a style of play, people like to be safe and have a risk vs reward be in the favor in almost every situation. Some of the best players in many games are turtles. If you cant get past someone turtling, then you need to rethink your strats vs them, or become a turtle yourself and out turtle them.

Since there is turtling in the game that opens up mind games for the person turtling and the aggressive person. Such as how i am suppose to get into this person, how am i going to force them into a bad situation and capitalize on mistakes made by either person etc...

Since you can air dodge in the air multiple times i this creates amazing depth, because it becomes strictly a mind game, trying to guess when you opponent is going to dodge and punish them for doing it. and on the reverse trying to out guess them and counter.

But of course this is just my opinion and its gone on way to long.

Not to shoot you down here, but the problem with Brawl isn't that is has camping, but that it revolves around it. It is not just a style of play for Brawl, but that it is the primary strategy and anyone that does not camp back is forced to put himself at extreme disadvantage, regardless of how good they eventually get at approaching through it.

To make a comparison, this is like those frame perfect Sagat players spamming that fireball upper and lower. Only two of them. Standing at opposite sides of the stage. Shooting them for the entire match.

On a competitive level, games that are super boring tend to fail as being competitive. Sure, dedicated players will still play it, but crowds don't like watching. I was at Evo World, and watching players just spam that crap was probably the most depressing thing I had ever seen in a fighting game.

The air dodge thing does not work as depth, because smart players use aerial moves that start and end faster than an airdodge recovery ends, allowing a player to spam into the space the person airdodged through and hit them after it anyway, or if they land, get punished.

 

[Heavyarms2050]

Super Smash Bros. = Street Fighter 2​

SSB was Nintendo 1st successful fighting game and SF2 was Capcom. They were both fun and anybody could pick it up and have fun

Super Smash Bros. Melee = Capcom vs. Marvel 1/2​

To improve the success of their games, Nintendo and Capcom tried to improve the formula by adding new mechanics and make their game much faster to make it more competitive. They both did that and created a broken mechanic that many people did not like: long chain combos. In both Melee and CvM1/2, there are many episodes that "pros" could easily wipe the "scrubs" with no effort and thus a large gap was between them which resulted that noobs would stay away which resulted less competition (less people playing).

Super Smash Bros. Brawl = Street Fighter 3​

Both Nintendo and Capcom realizing this mistake, they reverted back to the original formula and improve mechanics that did not make the game broken and made game slower than the previous game but faster than the original so the noobs can play.

What the point in comparing the two? My point being is that sometimes reverting popular games back to the their original formula and only tweaking the working mechanics does not make the game less competitive. Give brawl some time, it will get alot better

 

[Radical Dreamer]

Horrible comparison, not to mention that SF2 and SF3 are both pretty broken. Not as broken as Marvel, and not even as broken as Smash 64, but nevertheless at least as broken, if not more broken than Melee.

There's also one egregious point of factual inaccuracy: long chain combos originated in smash 64, not Melee, and were way more elaborate and broken in Smash 64.

 

[LOL_Master]

breaking out of everything = breaking out of all camping strategy = game based around mindgames

 

[LOL_Master]

Super Smash Bros. = Street Fighter 2​

SSB was Nintendo 1st successful fighting game and SF2 was Capcom. They were both fun and anybody could pick it up and have fun

Super Smash Bros. Melee = Capcom vs. Marvel 1/2​

To improve the success of their games, Nintendo and Capcom tried to improve the formula by adding new mechanics and make their game much faster to make it more competitive. They both did that and created a broken mechanic that many people did not like: long chain combos. In both Melee and CvM1/2, there are many episodes that "pros" could easily wipe the "scrubs" with no effort and thus a large gap was between them which resulted that noobs would stay away which resulted less competition (less people playing).

Super Smash Bros. Brawl = Street Fighter 3​

Both Nintendo and Capcom realizing this mistake, they reverted back to the original formula and improve mechanics that did not make the game broken and made game slower than the previous game but faster than the original so the noobs can play.

What the point in comparing the two? My point being is that sometimes reverting popular games back to the their original formula and only tweaking the working mechanics does not make the game less competitive. Give brawl some time, it will get alot better

yeah lewlorz

 

[Pink Reaper]

I played a Brawl match today with a friend who's in town from College. My Toon Link against his Lucario. We played on Delfino Plaza. All I did was run away, abuse my projectiles and camp my shield. For 8 minutes. The match ended with me having 34% and him having 122%. No one died.

 

[Witchking_of_Angmar]

I played a Brawl match today with a friend who's in town from College. My Toon Link against his Lucario. We played on Delfino Plaza. All I did was run away, abuse my projectiles and camp my shield. For 8 minutes. The match ended with me having 34% and him having 122%. No one died.

Gay and good are synonymous in the world of competitive gaming.

To a certain degree. This is just madness.

Gayness? This is BRAWWLLLLLL!

 

[rajendra82]

Right. That must explain why Halo has over a million unique players per day...

And I don't think that "more fun" was the reason we shifted from the Coliseum to NFL...

I think my analogy of comparing gladiatorial combat to Melee and football to Brawl was a a bit extreme. On second thoughts, Melee is more like college football was in the early part of last century. It was a mostly ground based game with no forward passes. Dangerous formations like the flying wedge and a lack of a lot of protective gear also made it a very physically demanding game. It was so bad that a lot of colleges considered banning it.

When they made it easier to score with forward pass (like easier to kill with final smash), made it less harsh on the player's bodies with lots of padding added on (think of the improved shielding now), and made the flying wedge formation illegal (just like they took out those advanced techs requiring lot of manual dexterity), college football took off in popularity. It is easier to play the game today than back then, no doubt about it, but when Brawl is so harshly criticized here, all of you sound about the same as if calling today’s college football a non-competitive sport and just a little more than a backyard game of touch football. Brawl is not Melee, but it’s not Mario Party 9 either.

 

[rajendra82]

Not to shoot you down here, but the problem with Brawl isn't that is has camping, but that it revolves around it. It is not just a style of play for Brawl, but that it is the primary strategy and anyone that does not camp back is forced to put himself at extreme disadvantage, regardless of how good they eventually get at approaching through it.

To make a comparison, this is like those frame perfect Sagat players spamming that fireball upper and lower. Only two of them. Standing at opposite sides of the stage. Shooting them for the entire match.

On a competitive level, games that are super boring tend to fail as being competitive. Sure, dedicated players will still play it, but crowds don't like watching. I was at Evo World, and watching players just spam that crap was probably the most depressing thing I had ever seen in a fighting game.

The air dodge thing does not work as depth, because smart players use aerial moves that start and end faster than an airdodge recovery ends, allowing a player to spam into the space the person airdodged through and hit them after it anyway, or if they land, get punished.

If you want to remove camping, let the game be played with Final Smash and Dragoon apperance turned on. Then the camper will have to move and approach when the Smash Ball appears or someone gets a piece of the Dragoon. A different kind of tournament play than 1v1, no items, final destination only, heck yeah. But it is a different game and a different age.

 

[Witchking_of_Angmar]

If you want to remove camping, let the game be played with Final Smash apperance turned on. Then the camper will have to move and approach when the Smash Ball appears. A different kind of tournament play than 1v1, no items, final destination only, heck yeah. But it is a different game and a different age.

I think the various Final Smash discussions have shown that FS's aren't good for tournament play. Let's not turn this thread into one of those discussions.

Also, I still don't think that you can compare Melee/Brawl with real life sports.

 

[Nobie]

That's a testament to Melee more than anything else. Scrubs think Melee's power came from these asnine "Advanced Techs", but those are mere icing. Melee's base mechanics are robust to the tilt point. I played Smash 64 yesterday and I was quite literally taken by shock at the jump Melee truly is, gameplay wise. I hadn't played the game in years, so I had no clue. I truly believe Melee was designed to be competitive -- no fighting game meant to be strictly party flavor is designed with that kind of gameplay leap. Sakurai clearly wanted Melee to stand up to any traditional fighting game when he created that game.

Conversely, Brawl is an undeniable regression in almost every facet, save the Shield Cancel system -- that's the only mechanic in the game that truly shows a progressive design philosophy. Like Brawl if you want to, but anyone that thinks the game is competitive in its design is straight stupid.


-Syn

I agree with the first part and disagree with the second part. You're surprised I bet.

My statement is referring to all those people who call Brawl less competitive than Melee because they took out advanced techniques, giving "fewer options." More than insulting to Brawl, statements like those are belittling to Melee's engine, becaus the implication with those words, whether they mean it or not, is that if Melee didn't have all of these "advanced techniques" that the competitive scene would have fallen off long ago. I'm not all that competitive, but I can tell you that is a load of crock.

And yet that's the recurring statement I get from seeing people rag on Brawl, that it has fewer advanced techniques. People do not understand their own criticism of it. If anything, they are critical of the game because they feel it is too restrictive, that it comes with too many strings attached.

Like I said, though. I disagree. There is a beauty to simplicity, a theme running throughout Smash Bros and many Nintendo games. I do not believe that the Brawl engine is any less deep, although it is arguable that it may be less competitive depending on how you define competition. If you define a game's competitiveness as being able to most drastically separate the good competitors from the great competitors, then maybe Brawl is not the best for that. But for letting as many people compete as possible?Why, you're already seeing the fondness people have for Brawl. And this isn't a Mario Kart or Mario Party type of "competition" due to the sheer distinction between characters.

Which brings me to a point you made in another post, that you find Melee to be a very expressive game while Brawl is very much less so, and on this point I must once again disagree. Why? Because already after only two weeks of Brawl, I am feeling the game to be very expressive for me, and from observing the reactions of others online and off, many people are feeling the same. As an example, I have found great fondness for Ganondorf, and it's mainly because his playstyle is in such stark contrast to the other characters, and especially to Melee. In Melee, speed was king, and no one could argue otherwise. Fox, Falco, Sheik, Marth, etc. The only reason Ganondorf was high up was due to l-cancel. The "way" to play Bowser was to try and reduce his speed problems as much as possible, to rely on forward airs and l-cancels and the speed of his Up B (and I love his Up B), to pretend to be a fast character.

But in Brawl, Ganondorf has a slow, methodical play style that is surprisingly refreshing. Just by the sheer nature of his attacks, and by the nature of the slower engine, he plays as a very different beast. His game plan revolves around slowly stopping the opponent's momentum. Neutral A's at opportune moments. Forward A's with enough impact at lower percentages to get the monkey off your back. And Forward B's to completely stop the game and put Ganondorf in a favorable position. The point of all this is that to so many people now, they are picking up characters and feeling that they can do something with them, that they are EFFECTIVE. And this is I think an indicator of how well Brawl expresses the player's intent and personality.

The core problem may be this: In Brawl, the better player does not win all of the time, and it was designed as such. The better player may win MOST of the time, but to the tournament-minded person, that one match they lose could happen to be the most important one of all.

Brawl is competitive in that it promotes a clash of wills through an engine designed to express the motions and thoughts of the player, but perhaps is not competitive in its desire to draw a big black line between "good at the game" and "bad at the game."