Should Melee's Top Tiers Stay Untouchable Through this Critical Turning Point in Project M's Life?

[Alex Night]

I feel like I should point out that there have been changes made that make them further away from their melee selves, though probably not further enough for many of us. They wanted the characters to intentionally play in a similar manner, not to make brand new characters and call them Fox/Falco.

This game is similar to Melee in many aspects, especially in that it's a fast paced environment, unlike Brawl. We should not forget that it isn't a 1:1 Melee copy though, as it's taken good aspects from Brawl, as well as Smash64 in order to create a competitive amalgamation of the games. I think the comparison to Sakurai's "I don't listen to anyone but myself" when you consider that Project M is a work that they do for the community with the community, is a lil unfair. We don't want them to go in that direction and only give us shallow teasers that don't give real information. What they're doing is perfect right now. They tell and show us things, but for the most part, they only listen to the things that make the most sense from a design perspective. Their job is not to take everything we say and apply it, just to listen to what we want in general and try to craft a game around it. I'd say they've done a pretty good job so far.

Yeah if you don't count the 3.0 Mewtwo and Pit shenanigans, then I'd say that they have done a good job so far.

 

[WinterShorts]

So far, I'm glad to see folks making good points for both sides in this discussion.

A stray thought occurred to me: Can pac/pcs/motion files be tied to an alternate costume? If this wizardry is possible, Melee Fox could live on as a bonus in his classic alt, and new Fox can shine on without obstruction.

Well didn't Mario and Dr. Mario have different pills, meaning...different movesets? Maybe? I don't know?

 

[Bleck]

I'm not the biggest fan of the Sakurai method of shutting out most voices from the community and making a game with a singular focus either.

two problems here;

1) what the community wants is not necessarily what's best for the game

the community claims to want a game that functions as a competitive fighter but then also wants it to be similar to a game so hilariously unbalanced that barely anybody takes it seriously

2) the smash community is not limited to "the guys who want melee clones" - brawl is one of the highest selling games of all time

people everywhere loved it despite it not being suitable for a competitive environment, because despite what people on these boards tend to think, smash bros. fans are not necessarily 'competitive melee' fans

there are people who like the games for the fanservice, for the video game history, for the fun events and stadium stuff and classic mode and what the heck ever

to imply repeatedly that these people not only don't exist but are probably a minority compared to the people who are still clamoring over melee is pretty ignorant

 

[Pwnz0rz Man]

Yeah if you don't count the 3.0 Mewtwo and Pit shenanigans, then I'd say that they have done a good job so far.

Yeah, but I'm not talking about game balance. I'm talking about how they go about revealing things to us and working on things in general. They listen to us enough but don't allow our collective torch wielding rabbling to force them to change the game drastically. That in itself feels better than Sakurai who doesn't seem to read our thoughts nor allow them to change his course of "I want it to be like this, so everyone else should like it too."

 

[Rhubarbo]

I think I know what @ InfiniteTripping is getting at. Let's say Melee never came out and instead, Project M was Project 64 (not the emu), a recreation of SSB64. A bunch of mechanics would never exist. Air dodging, for instance, is probably something the community would never come up with by themselves. Air dodging took Sakurai watching the Matrix over and over again way too many times on new year's eve 2000 to make it into Melee. On a large scale, this means we should recognize innovation isn't feasible in the hands of the hive-mind. Yes, that seems like an ironic conclusion given the purpose of this thread, but remember, I never suggested any specific changes to anybody in the OP, I just requested the PMDT to keep an open mind.

 

[Blank Mauser]

the community claims to want a game that functions as a competitive fighter but then also wants it to be similar to a game so hilariously unbalanced that barely anybody takes it seriously

Lol wut.

there are people who like the games for the fanservice, for the video game history, for the fun events and stadium stuff and classic mode and what the heck ever

to imply repeatedly that these people not only exist but are probably a minority compared to the people who are still clamoring over melee is pretty ignorant

If PM came out instead of Brawl these people probably still would've loved the game to death and thought it was amazing. if not more than they did currently.

 

[nimigoha]

Who needs airdodging and wavedashing when you have 0 landing lag XD

If PM came out instead of Brawl these people probably still would've loved the game to death and thought it was amazing. if not more than they did currently.

It's so true. The PM Master version will be incredible. Imagine if it was the sequel to Melee, including SSE, Turbo mode, All-Star Versus, costumes, characters, potentially Ike Climbers mode, and of course #47.

But even when people spend their free time to build this using community monitoring for no profit, people b*tch.

 

[nimigoha]

And then we wouldn't have people asking 'when is smash 4 pm comin out'

 

[Shadic]

@ nimigoha - Please don't double-post. There's an edit button for a reason.

 

[InfiniteTripping]

two problems here;

1) what the community wants is not necessarily what's best for the game

the community claims to want a game that functions as a competitive fighter but then also wants it to be similar to a game so hilariously unbalanced that barely anybody takes it seriously

2) the smash community is not limited to "the guys who want melee clones" - brawl is one of the highest selling games of all time

people everywhere loved it despite it not being suitable for a competitive environment, because despite what people on these boards tend to think, smash bros. fans are not necessarily 'competitive melee' fans

there are people who like the games for the fanservice, for the video game history, for the fun events and stadium stuff and classic mode and what the heck ever

to imply repeatedly that these people not only don't exist but are probably a minority compared to the people who are still clamoring over melee is pretty ignorant

If you read my first post I never said they were a minority to the Melee fanboys. You're right in that there are several contradictory voices in the community that want different things. In fact that is EXACTLY my point - when you've got your ear too close to the community and you exist in the first place to satisfy them, you hear all these contrasting voices and in the noise what ends up happening is you end up repeating patterns that worked before because that has been proven safe. But that doesn't make for a very fresh game.

What Project M is doing even puts off casuals that have had experience with Melee. When a friend of mine that was a casual fan of Smash played Project M it became immediately apparent to him that the top tier of Melee was barely touched at all and made to function exactly as they did in Melee. The engine was great but if you're going to offer a game with Melee's top tier, only with a few new punching bags, what's stopping me from popping in Melee and playing that instead, really? More costumes? I think Project M was started as something to bring balance to Brawl and bring back the Melee mechanics of certain characters, but those two things are now looking as though they are clearly at odds with each other now. It did replace Brawl by imitating Melee in a lot of ways, but I doubt it replaces Melee by imitating Melee, so that's not the path forward.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Spoiler

Well, I never.

What Project M is doing even puts off casuals that have had experience with Melee. When a friend of mine that was a casual fan of Smash played Project M it became immediately apparent to him that the top tier of Melee was barely touched at all and made to function exactly as they did in Melee. The engine was great but if you're going to offer a game with Melee's top tier, only with a few new punching bags, what's stopping me from popping in Melee and playing that instead, really? More costumes?

Calling the cast "punching bags" for the top Melee characters is both incredibly unfair, and wildly inaccurate. Of the Melee top tiers, only Fox is really indisputably in the PM top 10 -- while he is still broken, there's plenty of formerly unviable (or nonexistent) characters that are currently more broken.

Yeah, there's problems, but this comes across as more whiny than anything.

 

[InfiniteTripping]

Spoiler

Well, I never.


Calling the cast "punching bags" for the top Melee characters is both incredibly unfair, and wildly inaccurate. Of the Melee top tiers, only Fox is really indisputably in the PM top 10 -- while he is still broken, there's plenty of formerly unviable (or nonexistent) characters that are currently more broken.

Yeah, there's problems, but this comes across as more whiny than anything.

It seemed to me that Fox and Falco were still, like in Melee, undisputed the top two characters. I think saying Fox is merely in the top ten is really deceptive, I still think he's the best in the game. And that the problem, that certain characters are balanced around them causing them to be imbalanced against nearly everyone else. You can put your head in the sand and say everything is fine but it's putting people off who see what's really going on here.

 

[Bleck]

Of the Melee top tiers, only Fox is really indisputably in the PM top 10 -- while he is still broken, there's plenty of formerly unviable (or nonexistent) characters that are currently more broken.

yeah, but the rest of the characters are still basically impossibly bad by comparison

like, have you played bowser

he's still terrible

 

[RIDLEY is too SMALL]

have you played bowser

he's still terrible

that's because you're playing bowser wrong

you're supposed to hold R before the match

 

[Frost | Odds]

yeah, but the rest of the characters are still basically impossibly bad by comparison

like, have you played bowser

he's still terrible

Have you met me?

I'm still of the opinion that Bowser is about as bad (and maybe worse) against the cast as a whole (and particularly the top tier) in PM than he was in Melee. A pretty impressive feat, all things considered - though it was an easy mistake to make, and it's tough to balance characters that tend to truck noobs as hard as Bowser can.

Edit: a quick trip in the Way-Back machine reveals some old Bowser change suggestions that I still really like. I'm still extremely fond of the Flames serving a function similar to Rob's or Fox's lasers via very temporary, enormous size. I went back and read this, completely ready to totally hate all my old suggestions, but they still actually look reasonably good.

 

[Deleted member]

you have no idea what you're talking about

bowser, like most of the cast, is totally fine

 

[Rᴏb]

That's just wrong.

 

[Alex Night]

you have no idea what you're talking about

bowser, like most of the cast, is totally fine

Is that a joke?... Cause it's kinda funny.

 

[Blank Mauser]

Oh no a character that takes work, isn't seen in every top 3, and isn't considered part of the top 10? TERRIBLE!

 

[Alex Night]

Oh no a character that takes work, isn't seen in every top 3, and isn't considered part of the top 10? TERRIBLE!

Never said he was terrible, but in comparison to the Top 10?... He's not even relevant.

 

[JOE!]

he used to be amazing until the PMBR-nation attacked

 

[Frost | Odds]

He was never amazing. Playable, maybe -- though most of his results came from people not knowing or refusing to play the matchup.

you have no idea what you're talking about

bowser, like most of the cast, is totally fine

As much as I respect you, dude, regarding Bowser you're worse than clueless. Sorry.

 

[Blank Mauser]

Honestly I don't think its all that possible for people to not know the Bowser match-up. Hes an incredibly simple and linear character compared to other big bodies.

The fact that hes done well despite how average he is shows to me how viable his tools are. Maybe as a character he is overall less rewarding, but the tools he carries are enough to win games which I think is the most you could ask for.

 

[Paradoxium]

Well, obnoxious to play against doesn't necessarily mean imbalanced. Umbreon probably doesn't find Bowser obnoxious, so to him Bowser is fine. And I feel the same way, I just choose toonlink or Samus and just camp his ass out, or I just choose sheik and do the typical tilting and grabbing ****.

 

[Frost | Odds]

Honestly I don't think its all that possible for people to not know the Bowser match-up. Hes an incredibly simple and linear character compared to other big bodies.

And yet, every single game I see with a Bowser in it, I see people approaching him.

The fact that hes done well despite how average he is shows to me how viable his tools are. Maybe as a character he is overall less rewarding, but the tools he carries are enough to win games which I think is the most you could ask for.

The problem is precisely that his tools aren't enough to win games against a lot of cast members (there are at least 5 against whom Bowser cannot win), and also not against people playing most cast members intelligently - ie. camping, playing super noncommittally and waiting for Bowser to do something before getting the free grab -> kill.

It's incredibly easy to look in from the outside and say how viable Bowser is, but the simple fact is that despite my vast experience and practice with the character, I do better with any of a half dozen alts into whom I have put in dramatically less time and effort. The only time he's worth picking at all is if some opponent who I know plays impatiently and struggles against Bowser neglects to ban WarioWare.

 

[Fortress]

(there are at least 5 against whom Bowser cannot win)

I'm just making assumptions, but: Link, Falco (crawl armor, I guess?), Lucas, Pit, Sheik, Samus?

 

[Frost | Odds]

I'm just making assumptions, but: Link, Falco (crawl armor, I guess?), Lucas, Pit, Sheik, Samus?

You're right about the crawl armor on Falco. Imo that's actually one of Bowser's few winning matchups.

Sheik and Samus are reasonable guesses. I think Sheik is actually winnable, though - could be anywhere between 6:4 and 8:2 in Sheik's favor. IMO it's probably closest to 65:35. You can crawl through her needles if you have to, she can't chaingrab Bowser quite as effectively, and the improved dtilt and flame cancel and nair help *loads* in the MU.

Samus: maybe, but few to no Samuses actually use her new and improved tools (cough, zair) properly. I don't actually have that many problems with them. Bowser can powershield most her stuff pretty handily. While the MU is far from in Bowser's favor, it's certainly not unwinnable, at least the way most Samuses play. 6:4 in my experience. Her bad air mobility and floatiness (ie. she dies to Fortress pretty early) help a lot.

Link: Yes. Unwinnable, or near enough to it that it doesn't matter. There's no way to realistically get through Link's boomerang, zair, and grab.

Lucas: similar tools to Link (notably the zair - Bowser can't do anything about it). Borderline unwinnable, especially considering how easily he 0-deaths Bowser. Could be anywhere from 80-20 to 100-0 once the Lucas is good. If the Lucas sucks, Bowser can take it ez.

Pit: Brutal MU because Pit is just a godlike character in general, and Bowser sucks; but not unwinnable for the same reason Falco's not unbeatable - you can crawl through his most important tool. Maybe 3:7.

Matchups you missed:

Ivysaur - Grab *always* leads to a free upB, and pretty much everything else leads into everything else. Also, Bowser has no means of avoiding grabs because his spotdodge is worse than the Holocaust. And he can't edgeguard Ivy. And her edgeguards on Bowser are 100% free.

Mewtwo - similar to Ivysaur, and his reach is even more obnoxious. Important to note though that bad Mewtwos actually get rocked by Bowser. Only if the Mewtwo is competent does the matchup become bad. If he's good, the MU is unwinnable. Bowser simply has no way to ever, ever, get in on a good Mewtwo. The projectile, the ludicrous CC game (which leads to guaranteed 0-deaths out of dtilt or grab or fair), and the fact that M2 outranges Bowser, has an unfollowable roll and techroll, and can't be edgeguarded results in an absolute clusterduck.

Captain Falcon - Yeah, it's a weird matchup to lose 0-100. Basically, it's a result of his perfectly safe shield pressure on Bowser, combined with incredible DD game and the fact that he can 0-death Bowser every time. CF is just a perfect storm of things Bowser sucks at dealing with, though notably he doesn't have a perfect edgeguard game on Boozer, like Ivy or Mewtwo.

Diddy - Command grab, ludicrous projectiles, amazing edgeguarding, extremely difficult to edgeguard himself, a command grab that leads to a guaranteed spike(!), ridiculous neutral game in general, awesome upb ooS, Bowser's item throw animations are terrible. Bowser can't beat Diddy, except *maybe* on WW.

Honorable mention to Lucario, who may not be utterly impossible due to his own neutral game not being that much better than Bowser's, but whose command grab is impossible to miss on Bowser, and can dunk him from pretty much anywhere, at any time. Legit 90:10.

Other notable extremely rough, if not entirely unwinnable MUs:

-Zelda
-Fox (If he DD camps properly)
-MK (If he DD camps properly)
-ROB (80:20 or 90:10 for similar reasons to Diddy and CF)
-Olimar (Side-B all day)
-Mario (holy ****)
-Snake (Bowser can't really get through the spam)
-Wario (command grab, edgeguarding)
-Jigglypuff (rest)
-Kirby (command grab, edgeguarding, dash attack for free punishes anytime Bowser does anything)

All told, Bowser has winning matchups on maybe a small handful of characters (Falco, Peach, maaaaaaaaaybe Pikachu), but I'm pretty skeptical that he even beats those. He actually has far more impossible relevant matchups than he does in Melee, and most of his 'winnable' MUs are still terrible.

I'm sure this all sounds incredibly biased, but the simple fact is that I don't really practice or play Bowser anymore, despite him being by far my favorite character in any Smash game (and tons of practice with him in both Melee and PM). I get far better results with my:

- Toon Link
- Wolf
- Falco
- Mario
- Charizard
- Diddy
- Kirby
- Luigi
- Samus

than with Bowser, though I haven't done nearly as much tech or game practice with any of them. If he's not fixed next patch, then I guess I'll continue not playing him. I'd like him to be viable, but who knows what'll happen?

 

[DrinkingFood]

Puff is very hard to buff because of Rest and Kirby. If they improve her attacks, that means improving her combos and indirectly, Rest. Rest is very broken and bad design overall, but you don't see it because its on a character with one other really good move. Kirby is Jigglypuff with good design choices. It's eerie how similar they are w/o Rest in the mix.

http://www.reddit.com/r/SSBPM/comments/2jh4gl/my_thoughts_on_what_jigglypuff_needs/clbr962
Buffs her without being silly, I think, and encourages use of her two bad specials. Sing->rest would most likely only be feasible at mid-to-high percents where endlag is at least slightly higher than the time it takes them to mash out of sleep. Would also be dependent on spacing since it takes time for her to dash->jump->rest, and her slow run speed means sometimes it might be better to just straight grab instead of running to cover distance between grab reach and jump->rest reach. Might still be better though if they circumnavigated that whole issue and instead gave sing passive damage dealing ability while the opponent slept via flower effect, and just reset to neutral afterwards.
Honestly, if I had a hold of jiggs, I'd just redo a lot about her instead of trying to work around the mess she is now.

Also Dash Attack the Character isn't exactly full of great design either. It's just that Kirby isn't Jiggs-level dumb.

Late again on a response lol. I'm now checking this thread at a rate of like once per week. Maybe I'll read on and see if the overall post quality has increased from scrub logic.

EDIT: caught up with the last 6 pages. verdict: nope.

 

[Phan7om]

One of the big things that scares me about 3.5 is how little people know Kirby's overall design is one of the worst, and wont get to be made better since it could be seen as perfectly fine, or just okay if you fix a few things. Puffs overall design is much better than Kirby's, Kirby may be better balance wise but its because of his bad design. Dash Attack/Suicide Stock the character is very similar to a slow Sonic (in that Dash Attack is just as polarizing as Spin Shot but worse, and the character is carried by their design) with a much worse moveset, bad mobility, dies earlier, less range, rock is basically MK's dair with more combo potential, and heavily relies on a very mobile relatively low endlag infinite command grab that can kill people at 0% with an edgeguard if needed... basically an aerial wobble. Like wtf is this character lol!? If spamming dash attack until you have the stock lead and then kirbyciding all remaining stocks is a viable strategy, you know somethings very wrong.

Puff just has a below-average moveset, a few really good moves, a few "useless" moves, a lacking ground game, and a very punishable if missed move that kills around 30%, but still relatively close to a fundamental based character which we want. Prob a few more things im forgetting. Dont get me wrong, her design is definitely not something to praise, just sayin its not as bad as people seem to make it since there are characters with much worse designs.

 

[victinivcreate1]

Characters with bad design

PM Titans and their close friends
Falco (no joke, you can win matches with spamming shine dair laser and fsmash)
Fox (nair shine drill up smash lol, don't even need a laser)
Bowser (so pathetically bad its sad)
Ganondorf (incredibly polarizing CG, but has no neutral making him really ass)
Toon Link (been playing around with this character, and lol autocombo galore)

Now Falco really shouldn't get changed, but the titans, the sucky characters, and TL I think should.

Am I the only one who thinks Sonic is noticeably better than the other 5 PM titans?

 

[victinivcreate1]

EDIT: Double post

 

[Phan7om]

This thread is about to take another wild ride lol.

 

[Deleted member]

As much as I respect you, dude, regarding Bowser you're worse than clueless. Sorry.

the characters that are good right now are obviously busted ones, and ones that are fast enough to negotiate the busted ones somewhat. as soon as the obviously busted characters are nerfed, bowser goes back to being totally fine. i get where you're coming from because of how 3.02 meta evolved, but in the bigger picture bowser is well designed and should really stay as-is

 

[Phaiyte]

I think what's really funny is that once some of these characters are "fixed" the whole community is just gonna find another 2 characters to ***** and moan about. The cycle NEVER ends on ANY game that's known to get any kind patches. Mark my words: Armada will win a tournament about a month after the release of 3.5, then everyone will instantly cry for nerfs for the character he picks.

 

[Frost | Odds]

the characters that are good right now are obviously busted ones, and ones that are fast enough to negotiate the busted ones somewhat.

Agreed entirely.

as soon as the obviously busted characters are nerfed, bowser goes back to being totally fine.

No. Bowser currently suffers horribly, even against characters that are otherwise totally fine, such as Olimar, Zelda/Sheik, Wario, Kirby (though his design is also bad), Tink, ROB, and many others. This is probably a consequence of his poor design- namely his size (and therefore reach), and armor. Both those things only really help him in matchups where he wasn't in as desperate need of help- and meanwhile he continues to be terrible in every other respect due to his awful vulnerability to being camped and grabbed due to his dependence on the armor; as well as his godawful jumpsquat, terrible spotdodge, and unmanageable lag behind nearly every single one of his moves.

It's an easy mistake to make - and even if Bowser weren't changed at all, he'll certainly be much better than he currently is given the coming changes, but it won't be enough to make him truly viable, nor will it make him a much more fun character to play as or against. There are some very easy changes the PMDT could make to make Bowser less polarized and more fun for all, but I've elaborated on them elsewhere and there's no point repeating myself.

I think what's really funny is that once some of these characters are "fixed" the whole community is just gonna find another 2 characters to ***** and moan about. The cycle NEVER ends on ANY game that's known to get any kind patches. Mark my words: Armada will win a tournament about a month after the release of 3.5, then everyone will instantly cry for nerfs for the character he picks.

This is not constructive.

 

[Phan7om]

Phaiyte is only half right.

Whoever wins the first tournament 3.5 is at will instantly be seen as top 5 at least, people surprisingly just think like that. Say if Armada wins again with Pit, there will be some people who will say something like "Pit wasnt nerfed enough, the PMDT are idiots..." To them, they arent satisfied until the top 5 become the bottom 5 lol. But we gotta realize those people dont know much about the game, no matter how much they claim they know if they just look at results to see how good/broken a character is just shows their lack of knowledge of the game.

The way he won matters much more than just a win or lose. If he wins by a series of long automatic combos, mindless setups, lack of weaknesses, and option traps... then yeah Id say people have a better reason to ***** and moan. But if 3.5 really addresses all the problems of 3.0 and fixes them so that people win off of their skill level and knowledge of the game, and he wins because he's Armada, there is no reason to want nerfs to... basically, player skill lmao. Those who do, like I said, yell out "I know nothing about this game!" We just gotta ignore them and really analyze if any characters are actually that much better, or if the game is very well balanced and people need to learn the matchup.

Then there are things like placebos; where mains of that character see that character win a tourney which gives them more morale and confidence in their character and then start doing well. But thats a whole 'nother issue.

 

[GP&B]

Armada has outright acknowledged auto-combos within Pit and other characters' movesets as it is (everything about Pit's DThrow is just dumb). I think people want to see more intelligent play, but it is on us to make these observations when watching tournament winning players.

 

[Bleck]

hahaha are we still using the phrase "autocombos"

 

[GP&B]

I actually wanted to edit that after saying it because I do find the phrase really stupid.

The better way to put it is that Pit's options out of DThrow are ridiculously free.

 

[TreK]

I don't know, it carries the idea that you can just play those characters on autopilot pretty well.
I'm just going to use "flowcharty" to piss you guys off from now on.