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

[MajinSweet]

idk, I wish this were true, but I really haven't seen any.

The new air dodge opens ups a lot of different strategies. Reverse jumping to approach with bair, or land behind someone and still facing them. Good for punishing spammers, or campers. Dashing shield has a lot of potential for characters with low traction. You can dash, bait an attack, shield through it and your forward momentum allows you to punish with pretty much anything. Footstool jump actually has quite a bit of use depending on characters, there have been a few times where I've gotten gimp kills on a Pit player how got a little to greedy of the stage. I need to test it more but, I believe footstool even disables a persons shield. Not to mention, there have been a ton of character only techs to give them more diversity.

 

[boxelder]

Lugi's u-air is pretty decent for combos, esp at low percents or when it's stale. He can do it two or three times in one jump it has minimal knockback and does good damage. I think with a little practice you could add in the up b as well. I don't play Luigi but I've seen Gawes doing it.

 

[boxelder]

The new air dodge opens ups a lot of different strategies. Reverse jumping to approach with bair, or land behind someone and still facing them. Good for punishing spammers, or campers. Dashing shield has a lot of potential for characters with low traction. You can dash, bait an attack, shield through it and your forward momentum allows you to punish with pretty much anything. Footstool jump actually has quite a bit of use depending on characters, there have been a few times where I've gotten gimp kills on a Pit player how got a little to greedy of the stage. I need to test it more but, I believe footstool even disables a persons shield. Not to mention, there have been a ton of character only techs to give them more diversity.

Someone has also been posting in the character forums about using footstool jumping to break shields and punish with a quick down air, or B move, saw it in the Lucaus board (down-a makes him stay still, so you double tap jump next to a shielding character and immediately down-a), and warrio for the warrior waft. I haven't tried it myself, and outside of Wario I don't know if it's be more useful than a grab for most characters.

edit: Actually this could be pretty hilarious to do to someone waiting to shield grab you when you land.

 

[Scar]

That's something I said a while back that you had mentioned. UpB is neglected by Melee players in Brawl because of how unsafe it used to be. Now, we should use them a lot more. They're way good.

Also, I agree that stale moves will be a reliable way to combo with certain characters we haven't seen much from yet. I think the most reliable combos are going to end up being stale moves used multiple times in a single fulljump. DJ aerials take too much time.

 

[Earthstrike]

The nature of verifying assertions about reality.

Let me start off by saying I have not read the whole thread, only the posts scar listed in the OP. Reading through those posts I think there is something fundamentally missed about the analysis of data which would prove or disprove the OP's thesis (Melee is more competitive than Brawl).

I'm going to first provide a statement about the fundamental nature of the analysis of correlations. Whenever you're looking at a statement that correlates two sets of data there are always two possible causal relations between those data. Consider this fictional statement. Obese people watch more T.V than non-obese people. This is the information. From it, two statements relating them are extractable. Watching more TV will make you obese, or being obese will make you watch more TV.

How does this relate to the current debate? The evidence that may demonstrate thr OP's thesis would be two players with an equal "skill gap" having different win percentages between Melee and Brawl. Just because you have this evidence doesn't mean you can neglect the other causal relation. Does the lower win percentage in brawl imply that it isn't competitive OR does it imply that the skill gap between the two players is different across both games? This alone does not refute the OP's argument but bear with me as I link things together.

After reading several of the OP's referenced posts there seems to be this assertion that the metagame of Brawl will equilibriate to one which heavily favours projectile use. Lets take this assertion to be true and combine it with our arbitrary player win percentages. The higher win rate for melee and lower win rate for brawl can be interpreted to make a statement about a change in skill gap between the players in Melee and Brawl. But isn't this exactly what we'd expect if such a drastic metagamal shift occurred from an approach-based game to a projectile-based game? (The answer to that question is yes).

The error in calling brawl less competitive than Melee is that it defines skill in Brawl the same way it is defined in Melee. If we take skill to be the set of those techniques which maximize a player's chance of winning, then by you're own theory of a "camplike" metagame in brawl, skill in brawl (camping techniques) MUST be fundamentally different than skill in Melee (approach techniques), yet this whole comparison between the competitiveness of these two games holds skill to be defined as approach based ability exclusively.

As you may remember, this different analysis came about by looking at one of two causal relations between a set of different win percentages by two players. But I hardly contest that my relation is a possibility just as likely as the other. In science there are methods and principles used to determine which of the set of causal relations are correct. One of these principles is Ockham's razor which suggests that between two competing explanations, the one making the least assumptions should be used. The first causal link makes the assumption of the skill between the two player. The one I used does not.

Now since I've just written something like an essay I suppose I should make some kind of conclusive statement about the OP's (and many others') thesis, but that's not what this essay was about. This was about not taking the current similarity in win percentages between professionals as evidence which proves that Melee is more competitive than Brawl.

If the contents of this post go relatively uncontested and people wish, I could give my personal conclusion about which is more competitive (or they're equal) which has a lot to do with how relative competitiveness between is intrinsically related to relative randomness between those games. Again, assuming this post clears with most other users.

Thanks for reading!

Note: Melee, equilibriate, metagame, and favours should probably be added to this forum's spellcheck dictionary, if the Mod's care about something like that.

 

[Scar]

I haven't had a problem with "equilibrate." Favours wtf is dat we talk english here u n00b they r favors.

I'll read and respond to this post tomorrow, it's too late now. Thanks for posting, this looks terribly interesting.

Edit: Oh, that's because you're using an incorrect form of the word. Either that or I've never heard of equilibriation.

 

[paper_crane]

New options replaced them, so I don't really see a problem.

Which new options? Hyphen smashing? The reverse aerial rush? Yeah, they're cool, but you can't pretend that they even begin to compensate for the losses. The hyphen smash, for example, involves precisely two attacks and no more. The reverse aerial rush only affects the back aerial in any meaningful way.

Compare these to the likes wavedashing and dashdancing, which completely revolutionized every character's entire ground game. Or consider the old shffl, which transformed the majority of aerial attacks into safe offensive approaches. You just can't place hyphen smashing on the same level.

In terms of options, Brawl definitely lost more than it gained. And when options are limited, so is the players' ability to act unpredictably, and it inevitably follows that mindgames suffer too.

 

[Scar]

The new air dodge opens ups a lot of different strategies.

Mmkay.

Reverse jumping to approach with bair, or land behind someone and still facing them. Good for punishing spammers, or campers.

This stuff was in Melee.

Dashing shield has a lot of potential for characters with low traction. You can dash, bait an attack, shield through it and your forward momentum allows you to punish with pretty much anything.

This was actually BETTER in Melee than it is now. In Melee, shield comes out on the first frame you press L out of a dash. Now there is lag, preventing you from safely blocking well-timed attacks. That's basically the way I play Melee vs campy ground-based characters.

I run in, shield, and either roll away, shieldgrab, or aerial attack out of shield.

Footstool jump actually has quite a bit of use depending on characters, there have been a few times where I've gotten gimp kills on a Pit player how got a little to greedy of the stage. I need to test it more but, I believe footstool even disables a persons shield. Not to mention, there have been a ton of character only techs to give them more diversity.

This stuff I don't know anything about. I am interested to see where it goes.

 

[Earthstrike]

Equilibriate is used in chemistry often and favours is the British/Canadian spelling, much like armour and colour, neither of which is recognized either!

 

[MajinSweet]

No, new options have NOT replaced them as there is no universally equal option for all characters that works as well as either of those two techs.

There shouldn't be in my honest opinion, the game becomes rather stale that way. So far Brawl has focused on character techniques, which I think is a much better idea. Makes learning a character mean more, and instead of one or two uber universal techs that are always beneficial, you need to combined techniques to create a play style.

While this does hold slightly true, its really not true. Meta Knight and Marth have enough range to easily punish shield camping, but Ike is so slow that he really doesn't.

Ike is not nearly as slow as most people think though. So far I'm "maining" him, (take that lightly, games still so new) once you learn how to use him, he gets shockingly quick. His AAA attack is very fast, decent damage and moderate knockback, the savior to Ike players every where. His forward B is also a great move. It can punish people almost every time they miss a tech, and when charged just enough, you can speed boost right up to people, but not far enough to start the attack animation. The point of this? When the side B doesn't reach them to attack, it has zero lag. So this can go right into a grab or AAA combo. His fair, while not exactly fast is great when spaced properly. Some characters just can't counter attack when used correctly. His bair is super quick with great knock back, mix with RAR for best results. Okay, I need to stop rambling.

Link and Toon Link would more likely be the campers rather than the approachers as their projectiles simply allow them to force approaches, as does DDD(and Pit. Seriously, **** pit)

That wasn't the point though, they can still crush shield campers if need be.

Also, Power shielding is NOT hard to do if you just pay attention. I've managed to power shield at least 50% of my attempts and most of the ones that fail just end up shielding whatever incoming attack hits me anyways and i can still shield grab because of it.

I didn't say it was hard, I said it wasn't easy--which your 50% comment seems to support. If you face people with good spacing you won't be getting easy shield grabs.

Also, I've noticed that Standing grab has priority over running grab so I can actually grab AFTER a running grab and still get the grab(granted, this was in online matches, I might just have had some lag)

Once people start getting good and use shield cancel grab instead of dash grab, this won't be the case.

 

[Scar]

Which new options? Hyphen smashing? The reverse aerial rush? Yeah, they're cool, but you can't pretend that they even begin to compensate for the losses. The hyphen smash, for example, involves precisely two attacks and no more. The reverse aerial rush only affects the back aerial in any meaningful way.

Okay, maybe I don't know what reverse aerial rushing is. I'm assuming it's

1) Turn your back to the opponent
2) Jump
3) DI towards them and use your bair

If not, I'll look it up tomorrow or maybe someone can explain it to me.

Second, hyphen smashing was in Melee too, it was called JC Usmash. It is exactly the same maneuver, only it took technical skill to perform. Now it is easy as pie. Control stick forward, yellow stick upwards.

@ Earthstrike: do you mean EQUILIBRATE instead?

@Maijin, If it's your personal opinion that the options Melee presented made the game stale, then that's your opinion. That is not a typical reaction to "more options," though.

 

[boxelder]

Hey that footstool thing with Lucas actually works....

Someone needs to try this against a real person. it seems to kinda work with Yoshi too. Yoshi might have just gotten a lot better. So many characters to try.

 

[Scar]

lol Probably not the thread for this but I'm interested, what footstool thing?

...man I really need to get to bed.

 

[MajinSweet]

@Maijin, If it's your personal opinion that the options Melee presented made the game stale, then that's your opinion. That is not a typical reaction to "more options," though.

Thats not what I meant. More options are good, I won't deny that, but when every single character uses the exact same options as every other character it becomes stale. I would rather have more diversity in the cast so play styles are more defined.

 

[CT Chia]

someones gotta comment on my giant post a couple pages back sometime soon lol. scar? i think i made some nice points haha.

a lot of brawl stuff does seem to be more mingames and tech chasing esque type stuff, but I think there is A LOT of that in melee. i mean, sure there are tons of combos, but a guarantee a lot of the footage in people's combo vids for instance could have been broken from a good tech (or not teching at a certain point), or tech rolling or something different. while there is much more unescapable stuff in melee, there is a lot in melee that is escapable.

as for going against projectile spammers in brawl, just gotta be careful, there are plenty ways around it.

-one, your shield. the shield is simply amazing in brawl and a great enhancement i think. power shielding is easy now, and the fact u can cancel your run with your shield helps get in close range against projectile spammers. also characters with fast dash startup times (like samus) can do something very similar to a shield wavedash type thing. theres a vid of it somewhere.

-two, theres airdodging which works well. you can also use this to pick up projectiles that are able to be picked up.

-three, crawling. some characters crawl so low that itl go under certain projectiles.

-four, your own projectiles. outsmart your opponent with your own projectiles that hit while they are still stuck in animation from their last projectile, or use piercing ones like ROB's lasers that cant be stopped.

-five, platforms. some projectiles aren't platform friendly and you can just them to jump your way to your opponent.

-six, play aggressive. dont let them projectile spam you. while some spamming techniques are countered best by your own spamming, others are countered greatly by playing overly aggressive on them.

-seven, destroy the projectiles. some characters attacks can simply destroy projectiles. think of a marth getting through my samus missiles in melee

-eight, (sort of like seven) EAT THEM! some characters have moves meant to destroy projectiles, the eat/swallow attacks with wario, kirby, dedede, or other things like GAW's bucket.

-nine, super armor. if your going against a character with strong projectiles that can actually kill like zelda and you have super armor moves, use them. olimar is very proficient with this with his whistle armor (downB for him is super armor). use that on a zelda's din fire, you dont get knocked back, and while zelda is still in delay, you have enough time for a strong attack (thx to siggy for that tip)

-ten, patience. just wait it out, learn the pattern, and make your own options. also consider what character your using and know what they can do. mario can cape, ROB can pierce (or reflect with his overB), toon link and link can stand there (did you know if your standing with TL doing nothing a dins fire CAN NOT hit you? even if its positioned behind you at your head the shield still stops it. probably works with link but havnt tested it yet), spacies can reflect, kirby and dedede can eat, olimar can armor, meta knight can fly over em, GAW can bucket, and so on. nearly every character has a unique counter.

theres plenty you can do against projectile spammers, you just can't always run in and hope for the best. being wreckless is not a good option. however some characters are specifically weak to them in this game, such as marth.

lol i should call that the 10 commandmets of countering projectiles. you heard it here first from chibosempai

 

[Scar]

Thats not what I meant. More options are good, I won't deny that, but when every single character uses the exact same options as every other character it becomes stale. I would rather have more diversity in the cast so play styles are more defined.

I'd hate to offend you, but how much do you really know about Melee? How deep did you get? I got pretty deep, and I have encountered HUNDREDS of unique, personal playstyles. No one really plays the same character the same way, there are personal gimmicks, personal tricks, personal everything.

There is a metagame, however, and good players usually stick to the best strategy. If you find the best strategy in the game to be boring, then certainly it isn't for you. If Brawl turns into the campfest that some are predicting, then I probably won't play it competitively, that really isn't for me.

 

[boxelder]

lol Probably not the thread for this but I'm interested, what footstool thing?

...man I really need to get to bed.

You can footstool jump to break a shield and then down-a attack them before you go up (or down b with warrio). Could gimp shield grabbers unless I'm missing something. Should work for any character with a quick down air that goes down or stays stationary....****, like toon link. It seems to work really well with him.

****, it even seems to work with dedede.

 

[CT Chia]

Okay, maybe I don't know what reverse aerial rushing is.

run at them, quickly press back (sort of like if you were skidding), the press forward again while jumping. you jump with your back to the opponent with losing very little momentum. its not in melee. you can see me do it in like any match i play with anyone. especially with TL

 

[paper_crane]

Okay, maybe I don't know what reverse aerial rushing is. I'm assuming it's

1) Turn your back to the opponent
2) Jump
3) DI towards them and use your bair

If not, I'll look it up tomorrow or maybe someone can explain it to me.

Yeah, that's it. Come to think of it, it existed in Melee as moonwalking, didn't it? It was just harder before.

Second, hyphen smashing was in Melee too, it was called JC Usmash. It is exactly the same maneuver, only it took technical skill to perform. Now it is easy as pie. Control stick forward, yellow stick upwards.

I was actually referring to the technique where you cancel the dash attack into the usmash for a two-hit combo... a technique which, now that I think of it, is not called hyphen smashing but is actually named after some guy whose name I can't remember. I'll figure that out later -_-;

 

[Pink Reaper]

Let me start off by saying I have not read the whole thread, only the posts scar listed in the OP. Reading through those posts I think there is something fundamentally missed about the analysis of data which would prove or disprove the OP's thesis (Melee is more competitive than Brawl).

I'm going to first provide a statement about the fundamental nature of the analysis of correlations. Whenever you're looking at a statement that correlates two sets of data there are always two possible causal relations between those data. Consider this fictional statement. Obese people watch more T.V than non-obese people. This is the information. From it, two statements relating them are extractable. Watching more TV will make you obese, or being obese will make you watch more TV.

How does this relate to the current debate? The evidence that may demonstrate thr OP's thesis would be two players with an equal "skill gap" having different win percentages between Melee and Brawl. Just because you have this evidence doesn't mean you can neglect the other causal relation. Does the lower win percentage in brawl imply that it isn't competitive OR does it imply that the skill gap between the two players is different across both games? This alone does not refute the OP's argument but bear with me as I link things together.

After reading several of the OP's referenced posts there seems to be this assertion that the metagame of Brawl will equilibriate to one which heavily favours projectile use. Lets take this assertion to be true and combine it with our arbitrary player win percentages. The higher win rate for melee and lower win rate for brawl can be interpreted to make a statement about a change in skill gap between the players in Melee and Brawl. But isn't this exactly what we'd expect if such a drastic metagamal shift occurred from an approach-based game to a projectile-based game? (The answer to that question is yes).

The error in calling brawl less competitive than Melee is that it defines skill in Brawl the same way it is defined in Melee. If we take skill to be the set of those techniques which maximize a player's chance of winning, then by you're own theory of a "camplike" metagame in brawl, skill in brawl (camping techniques) MUST be fundamentally different than skill in Melee (approach techniques), yet this whole comparison between the competitiveness of these two games holds skill to be defined as approach based ability exclusively.

As you may remember, this different analysis came about by looking at one of two causal relations between a set of different win percentages by two players. But I hardly contest that my relation is a possibility just as likely as the other. In science there are methods and principles used to determine which of the set of causal relations are correct. One of these principles is Ockham's razor which suggests that between two competing explanations, the one making the least assumptions should be used. The first causal link makes the assumption of the skill between the two player. The one I used does not.

Now since I've just written something like an essay I suppose I should make some kind of conclusive statement about the OP's (and many others') thesis, but that's not what this essay was about. This was about not taking the current similarity in win percentages between professionals as evidence which proves that Melee is more competitive than Brawl.

If the contents of this post go relatively uncontested and people wish, I could give my personal conclusion about which is more competitive (or they're equal) which has a lot to do with how relative competitiveness between is intrinsically related to relative randomness between those games. Again, assuming this post clears with most other users.

Thanks for reading!

Note: Melee, equilibriate, metagame, and favours should probably be added to this forum's spellcheck dictionary, if the Mod's care about something like that.

The fundamental flaw here is that you state that as Brawl moves towards a camp-like metagame, it will equal out to Melee's approach metagame in terms of competitiveness. The flaw here however, is that it is impossible to have camping as the focus of a fighting game as that means you'll end up in one of very few situations. Either, a) You'll camp your opponent and force them to approach(they didn't chose a camping character) b) Your opponent will camp and force you to approach(you didn't chose a camping character) or c) You and your opponent will both attempt to camp leading to a stalemate.

I can relate this to a previous post here:

Why does it matter if melee is a more "competitive" game then brawl?
This is primarily a competitive smash board. Thus on this board, whichever game fosters better competitive play is of great importance. The graphics, the number of characters, the music, the single player and all that other jazz is of no importance.

With a lack of competitive potential comes a "weaker" competitive scene and "weaker" competition. Think of something like tic-tac-toe compared to chess. Have you ever heard of competitive tic-tac-toe players?
Melee to Brawl is sort of like chess to tic-tac-toe. The difference is "competitive" potential is not as great as in the provided example, but it helps demonstrate my point.

Yeah, that's it. Come to think of it, it existed in Melee as moonwalking, didn't it? It was just harder before.

I was actually referring to the technique where you cancel the dash attack into the usmash for a two-hit combo... a technique which, now that I think of it, is not called hyphen smashing but is actually named after some guy whose name I can't remember. I'll figure that out later -_-;

No, your thinking of Linking which is Dash attack->Usmash. I think hyphen smashing refers to being able to do any smash out of a run, but this was already in Melee as CC Smashing(you could CC out of running and just do any smash)

 

[Scar]

Yeah, Lucas, TL, Lucario, Sonic, certainly more.

@Chibo, basically a moonwalk except much much easier. Also, the things you brought up vs projectile spamming is very obvious, and basically what we do against Falco in Melee. It's just too easy to get trapped by it in this game, much easier than in the previous game. It's also much easier to perform. SHL like Reik and Eggm is nearly impossible to do unless you're either Reik or Eggm.

Also, running in and shielding is what we should be doing vs projectiles, but it takes a few frames for the shield to come up. It didn't used to.

 

[ErciChewman]

Is this a how to/tactical moves thread or a melee vs. brawl thread? Let's get back on track people.

Brawl is really fun...for an hour or two. I can't practice it for more than that, there's nothing to practice. Unlocking trophies....whoopty-doo! However with melee, I can practice moonwalking and cool wavelands for hours on end. Is this where you say "quit whining and go do it then" ? Don't worry, I will, as soon as i'm done beating you in Brawl.

It's a shame melee was a rushed project. Could you imagine if Melee had more characters and movesets, and a stage builder, and interchangable controller options(omg that would rule), and an online capability(ZOMG!). It would be uncontested in superiority. Instead, Brawl has all those things....but with no motive to use them. It's like playing Mario Party online. Ooooo, I can use my controller options to make it even easier to play my slow a$$ characters, like what's the point? They spent all this time with these add-ons, and they don't seem to give the game any more value, like putting rims on a Pinto.

This is what I imagine will happen. All players with competitive mindsets, i.e. melee vets and pro gamers alike, will all play Brawl and find what few tactics there are to be exploited. After a while, a few big tournies will go by and these players will dominate the scene. This in turn will drive all the casuals and scrubs who think they are good now (who will learn they are not so good) away. The losers will stop going to tournaments once they lose a few, and we'll be left with a community of competitive players. This community, however, is already aware that melee is superior to brawl, so when they can't draw the large crowds from Brawl anymore, there won't be any reason to not go back to melee.

Essentially, the competitive scene (and it's players) are only going to tolerate Brawl because it draws large crowds and will supply many upcoming tournaments with large prizes. Maybe even a short MLG run. But as I said, this will all fade fast if the game proves to be as shallow as we believe. If some sort of miracle happens, and brawl turns out to be deeper than we imagined, I'll print this post out and eat it.

Until then, let's have as much fun as we can playing Brawl, cuz it's prolly gonna get old, quick.

Like they say in porn, "once you go Brawl, you go right back to Melee."

 

[Scar]

lol If you want to read the Melee v Brawl competitiveness discussion, that's the first 20 pages. Now that it's later, we're talking about what we can do to get Brawl to be more competitive, as defined in the OP.

My response to your post was definitely that Melee would have been amazing had the project had more time. I wish we had all those features. Also, I think the competitive community will make a decision one way or another and that Melee will never be the same again, that's for sure.

Finally, I questioned whether Brawl tournies would ever get that great of a turnout since WiFi eliminates the need for extremely casual players to ever test out an actual tournament.

 

[paper_crane]

No, your thinking of Linking which is Dash attack->Usmash. I think hyphen smashing refers to being able to do any smash out of a run, but this was already in Melee as CC Smashing(you could CC out of running and just do any smash)

Thanks for the clarification. Unfortunately, though, you can only dash into usmash in Brawl; fsmash and dsmash won't work here...

 

[Pakman]

Today, I laid a fully charged down smash mine with Snake while my opponent was off the stage. I finished setting the mine and started to dash away while it was inactive. I tripped. The mine blew up. I died.

Thats just dumb.

 

[Rx-]

No one who is "anti-Brawl" is telling you not to play the game.

That's an overgeneralization...

 

[boxelder]

Yeah, Lucas, TL, Lucario, Sonic, certainly more.

Wow, so that adds a whole new layer to the air approach mind game. I'm going to have to incorperate this one, it works with all my favorite characters.

 

[Earthstrike]

The fundamental flaw here is that you state that as Brawl moves towards a camp-like metagame, it will equal out to Melee's approach metagame in terms of competitiveness. The flaw here however, is that it is impossible to have camping as the focus of a fighting game as that means you'll end up in one of very few situations. Either, a) You'll camp your opponent and force them to approach(they didn't chose a camping character) b) Your opponent will camp and force you to approach(you didn't chose a camping character) or c) You and your opponent will both attempt to camp leading to a stalemate.

I never stated that it would equal out. In fact the concluding paragraph of my post EXPLICITLY stated it was not focused on the comparison of the competitivenesses but rather making sure you don't use a certain piece of data erroneously. Please read more carefully.

Note that a camp based metagame translates to tic-tac-toe game play where you actually have the choice of whether or not you win lose or draw.

That's a logical impossibility. In a game a player can never have the choice to win since a problem is posed when both players choose to win. The assertion that a player can choose to win is incorrect.

 

[Scar]

Today, I laid a fully charged down smash mine with Snake while my opponent was off the stage. I finished setting the mine and started to dash away while it was inactive. I tripped. The mine blew up. I died.

Thats just dumb.

LMAO

That's an overgeneralization...

Yes it is. In this thread, we are not. I certainly am not.

 

[MajinSweet]

I'd hate to offend you, but how much do you really know about Melee? How deep did you get? I got pretty deep, and I have encountered HUNDREDS of unique, personal playstyles. No one really plays the same character the same way, there are personal gimmicks, personal tricks, personal everything.

I can do most of the basic AT's like shffl, wave dash, ledge hop and basic chain grabs. Can't do stuff like Samus's swd, or edge cancel attacks. And of course no one plays a character exactly the same way. But to be good at Melee, you have to know these universal techniques, no way around it. Why is Brawl less competitive because it focuses on something else? And really, have you seen a pro melee Fox player not use up throw to up air, SHL, shine spiking or drillshines? I wasn't trying to say people play a carbon copy of each other, in a game like smash of course everyone will have something unique to there play style but, the amount of things you must do far out weigh those things.

There is a metagame, however, and good players usually stick to the best strategy. If you find the best strategy in the game to be boring, then certainly it isn't for you.

Thats my point, maybe in Brawl there won't just be a "best strategy" that every single person must use in order to win. Why not multiple strategies that are used for different things?

If Brawl turns into the campfest that some are predicting, then I probably won't play it competitively, that really isn't for me.

From my experience this couldn't be more wrong. Just to give you an example, on gamefaqs not too long ago Mew2king gave his impressions of Brawl and he theorized on its future. He predicted shield grabbing was going to dominate the game. Now, the first thing I noticed (and hugs and Gimpy mention this recently on 1up.com) in Brawl is that grab attacks and throws probably got the biggest nerf out of all basic mechanics. Grab attacks for the most part do crap damage, throws too in most cases. Very few characters have throws with any kill potential. And besides maybe Dedede, there doesn't seem to be anyone that can really combo from a throw at all. So whats my point? No one knows how this game will end up being played. The only reason camping looks good now is because we suck, and camping--in pretty much any game is easier to do than being offensive. I might be wrong here, but didn't Melee start out the exact same way? With tons of roll spamming and down smashes?

 

[ErciChewman]

lol If you want to read the Melee v Brawl competitiveness discussion, that's the first 20 pages.

LOL first 20 pages! there's only 10 pages so far. Don't tell me you don't have your profile set to 40 posts per page lulz

 

[Pink Reaper]

Today, I laid a fully charged down smash mine with Snake while my opponent was off the stage. I finished setting the mine and started to dash away while it was inactive. I tripped. The mine blew up. I died.

Thats just dumb.

Somewhere.....Sakurai is lol'ing XD.

 

[Scar]

That's a logical impossibility. In a game a player can never have the choice to win since a problem is posed when both players choose to win. The assertion that a player can choose to win is incorrect.

SHOULD be incorrect. Pink Reaper is arguing that projectile camping is such a broken strategy that it forces the other player to choose amongst terrible options, none of them involve gaining an advantage.

Fixing your post should make it look something like this...

In a game worth playing, a player can never have the choice to win.

Both players choosing to win in this case results in people sitting and camping eachother. Depends on who is the better camper, which he already stated.

From my experience this couldn't be more wrong. Just to give you an example, on gamefaqs not too long ago Mew2king gave his impressions of Brawl and he theorized on its future. He predicted shield grabbing was going to dominate the game. Now, the first thing I noticed (and hugs and Gimpy mention this recently on 1up.com) in Brawl is that grab attacks and throws probably got the biggest nerf out of all basic mechanics. Grab attacks for the most part do crap damage, throws too in most cases. Very few characters have throws with any kill potential. And besides maybe Dedede, there doesn't seem to be anyone that can really combo from a throw at all. So whats my point? No one knows how this game will end up being played. The only reason camping looks good now is because we suck, and camping--in pretty much any game is easier to do than being offensive. I might be wrong here, but didn't Melee start out the exact same way? With tons of roll spamming and down smashes?

Yes, I am very close with M2K, I gave him that copy of Brawl. He and I frequently sit in my living room having this exact discussion, where I say "this game is terrible" and he says "it's so boring... I'm stuck with it for the next 6 years."

Anyways, I happen to know that he doesn't think grabs do anything. He just knows that shieldgrabbing is broken. That is to say that you can sit in your shield, block any aerial, and grab the person before they can do anything about it. Unfortunately, only a few characters can punish out of grab.

This will lead to huge imbalances. This is the beginning of tier lists.

So, nothing said between the combined knowledge of HugS and M2K... and Gimpy, is at all contradictory.

 

[boxelder]

I wonder if the footstool shield break was put in for pro players. They had to decide to have it break the shield, and they must have done that for a reason, otherwise they'd just make you jump off the shield. I'm surprised this isn't getting more play...it seems like a big deal to me. Yoshi just got tons better.

 

[MajinSweet]

SHOULD be incorrect. Pink Reaper is arguing that projectile camping is such a broken strategy that it forces the other player to choose amongst terrible options, none of them involve gaining an advantage.

Fixing your post should make it look something like this...



Both players choosing to win in this case results in people sitting and camping eachother. Depends on who is the better camper, which he already stated.

And why exactly do you guys think camping is some unbeatable strat? First of all its very stage dependent, so yeah fine--people can camp on FD. So what? I've seen Fox, Falco players camp on FD in melee. Now, what about battle field? No way is someone going to be able to really camp there, the stage is just to small and any character with at least a decent amount of speed can cover the distance in such a short amount of time. So, yeah--Brawl will feature counter picking like Melee did. I don't see any problem here at all.

 

[Scar]

Does this immediately break the shield? It just drops shields, right? Also, no. They put nothing in for pro/competitive players. I can guarantee that.

@Maijin, really good campers can do it. I can do it.

 

[Pink Reaper]

I never stated that it would equal out. In fact the concluding paragraph of my post EXPLICITLY stated it was not focused on the comparison of the competitivenesses but rather making sure you don't use a certain piece of data erroneously. Please read more carefully.




That's a logical impossibility. In a game a player can never have the choice to win since a problem is posed when both players choose to win. The assertion that a player can choose to win is incorrect.

Actually, in Tic-Tac-Toe, the player with the starting move basically has nearly complete control of the ending, his opponent CAN NOT WIN, if the first move takes the center square. From there, the opponent can either take an adjacent square and lose or take a diagonal square and force a draw. So, by this logic, the first move made by the first player decides whether he wants to win/draw or if he wants to lose(doesn't chose the center square) Now, im not saying this holds true for Brawl, but I am stating that even if you have two opponents with equal drive to win, only the first can chose to win, the second can only chose to lose or draw.

 

[boxelder]

Does this immediately break the shield? It just drops shields, right? Also, no. They put nothing in for pro/competitive players. I can guarantee that.

I'm not sure what you mean. Against bots it opens the shield briefly while the player flinches. More than enough time to sneak in an attack. If you can't reliably shield against a large portion of the roster jumping in...the game changes quite a bit...head is currently spinning with possibilities.

here's where I first heard about it: http://smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=153498

 

[Sirami]

I wrote up a topic on how I personally avoid tripping. I've only tripped once in the last 3 days of playing, since I started using this, and it was because I chose to dash without walking first (I think, that still needs to be tested.

http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=153247

There's the post on it. Can somebody test to see if you trip even if you start your walk animation before you dash?

Also, there's another post I made that applies to this topic, again from another post, but I'll repost it here.

Re-Posted from http://www.smashboards.com/showthread.php?t=152180&page=11
---------------------------------------------------------
You know what, I'm sick of hearing these arguments (listed in bold:

Melee was designed to be a party game too, but we made it competitive. We're doing the same thing for Brawl.


I see this all the time, every time a new game comes out, and the new game is always embraced. This won't be different for Brawl. I'm assuming (wrongly btw) that just because a game is embraced, that it's better (competitively?).

It took a long time for Melee to become deep. Brawl will become deep in time

The reason people made Melee competitive is because folks realized over time that the game was really deep. In the eyes of the rest of the fighting game community, Melee was just another party game, until people saw that it was a good competitive game. Once everybody saw it for what it is, it was embraced. That's not the case this time. Now everybody's embracing Brawl, because it's Smash, the sequel to a great game. People are so desperate to love it, that they simply won't see that it's extremely likely that it won't be worth embracing. This kind of mentality has happened before, with the transition from TTT to T4. T4 came out, and the majority of Tekken players stopped playing TTT, and switched to T4, which will always be remembered as "the stinker" of the Tekken series, in the eyes of most competitive Tekken players. There were a ton of people that pointed out legit reasons as to why T4 wasn't nearly as good as TTT, but nobody listened. Almost everybody embraced it, brought it to the major tournaments that it really didn't belong in, and a lot of people to this day are disappointed with what it did to the Tekken community. Honestly, the Tekken community here in the US has never regained the strength it had before T4 came out.

TTT > T4 : SC2 > SC3 : And just speculating: T6 looks like it could be very bad at a competitive level, compared to T5.

And since somebody mentioned shooters up there, ever heard of Quake 3 and 4? This is almost a mirror example to the scene now with Melee and Brawl. ID clearly made an attempt to market their game to casual gamers, and a broader audience. They toned down the "advanced techs" in Q3, and just made the game easier to play. When the game first came out there were a lot of good players that saw Q4 for what it was. Again, when people complained about Q4, many pro players didn't listen, and were ready to embrace Q4 regardless of the complaints.

"Give it time. You'll get used to it." is what a lot of people said about Q4. Well, a lot of Q3 people switched over to Painkiller, CS, or some other shooter, while some tried to make everything they could out of Q4. Eventually it was realized that Q4 is a game that honestly, almost anybody that's decent at shooters can excel at, and because of the physics changes the first kill ends up being so important that it's simply not a good game when it comes to testing skill. What happened? Well, nobody plays Q4 anymore. Not nearly as many people play Q3. The Quake community moved on, for the most part.

This kind of thing sucks big time for Smash players. If people embrace Brawl, and the community splits, the Smashers don't have a "Painkiller" or "CS" to switch to, as there's no other fighter out there like Smash.

Hands down, Brawl wasn't designed to be competitive, at all. If it ends up being a great competitive game, it'll be an accident again. It's not safe to rely on accidents that might happen.

Now I'm not saying "don't play Brawl", but what I am saying is, "don't stop playing Melee"! If a whole lot of players drop Melee now, which is clearly a gem of a fighter, for something that is designed to be a nothing more than a hunk of coal (fun to burn, but doesn't last too long), well, you're just hoping that there's a gem of equal value in that lump of coal.

There is always a chance I guess.

Look, change in and of itself isn't a bad thing, but when all changes point to the fact that the game was designed specifically to not cater to you and your preferences, it's probably not going to be that great a game for you. If somebody invents Chess 2, now with only two easy to understand pieces (pawns and rooks), only now pawns move and capture like the King used to, and the goal is no longer checkmate, but to take all of the other guy's pieces...... well.... I doubt that pro Chess players would even try to embrace it. Then again, Chess players are pretty smart.

 

[MajinSweet]

Yes, I am very close with M2K, I gave him that copy of Brawl. He and I frequently sit in my living room having this exact discussion, where I say "this game is terrible" and he says "it's so boring... I'm stuck with it for the next 6 years."

Anyways, I happen to know that he doesn't think grabs do anything. He just knows that shieldgrabbing is broken. That is to say that you can sit in your shield, block any aerial, and grab the person before they can do anything about it. Unfortunately, only a few characters can punish out of grab.

This will lead to huge imbalances. This is the beginning of tier lists.

So, nothing said between the combined knowledge of HugS and M2K... and Gimpy, is at all contradictory.

I hate to say it but, M2K is just plain wrong here, right from the start of it. "Block any aerial" he is already thinking of it on Melee terms, where you could just shffl any air attack. In Brawl many characters can poke shields with standing attacks with no fear of being grabbed. This will force the would be shield grabber to do anything except try to grab. Also, a lot of characters can space aerials so you land behind your opponent, no chance of shield grabbing. This game isn't nearly cut and dry as you guys make it out to be. Shield grabbing will probably end up being less effective than it was in Melee. Sure its "safer" but, so what? If you can't accomplish anything with it, who cares. And there are still tons of ways to get around shield grabbers.