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

[Deleted member]

The reason so many characters have received over-the-top tools is because of the bad example the space animals have set. They have been the root of the problem since the very beginning. If you are going to be one of those stubborn players who insists on no spacie changes, then you should shut up and stop moaning about all the stupid things the other characters can do.

 

[leekslap]

The reason so many characters have received over-the-top tools is because of the bad example the space animals have set. They have been the root of the problem since the very beginning. If you are going to be one of those stubborn players who insists on no spacie changes, then you should shut up and stop moaning about all the stupid things the other characters can do.

I don't think shine is as broken as Sonic's spin dash jump cancel auto combo thing. And they are not a bad example. They DO have over the top strengths in Melee, but their weakness was just as bad too. I think the standard for a character is a character with great tools that require thought and aren't broken, defined weaknesses that can be exploited by any character if played poorly( falling fast, being light, slow, etc. )and requiring skill built up by the hundreds of hours of play ( *cough*Mario*cough* ). I really think that PM needs more of a Melee feel to it as some characters have attributes that make it clear it's artificial for the lack of a better word. For example, Mario's up b hitbox is enormous for some reason, while Sakurai would make it as big as it should be. It also is super fast and has riduculous priority, but that's just off topic. Also, easy techs fit this category such as Link's ( not Tink ) bomb jump and Squirtle's hydropivoting which are riduculously easy for the amount of utility and control they give. Shine alone has waveshining, pillaring, JC grab OoShine, multishining, shine shining, shine shining shine triple cancel pivot fart... I'm also not saying to "Melee-ize" everyone and give them super hard techs. Ganon is deep because of his weaknesses. He can't approach and he's slow so you have to mitigate that by mixing up side bs and maximizing mobility with down b ledge cancels and mindgaming every chance you get. Mario... well, that's gonna be a hard one. I know it sounds a bit esoteric and biased, but it is how I would balance the game. I think the PMDT is with me balance-wise because their decisions for 3.5 are genius. Like, really genius. Super duper genius. Almost-made-me-forget-2.5-Sonic level of genius.

 

[InfinityCollision]

For example, Mario's up b hitbox is enormous for some reason, while Sakurai would make it as big as it should be.

Pfffffffffftahahahahahahahahahahahaa

At this point I'm convinced you just post to **** with us.

 

[GP&B]

I'm still not even remotely convinced that spacies goodness is justified by weaknesses that are shared by plenty of other characters (or certainly will be in 3.5). Saying it over and over again will not change anything.

 

[Phaiyte]

I'm still not even remotely convinced that spacies goodness is justified by weaknesses that are shared by plenty of other characters (or certainly will be in 3.5). Saying it over and over again will not change anything.

Shared by other characters? Isn't recovery a major thing right now that people are complaining about? Yaknow, the thing that Fox and Falco don't have?

 

[GP&B]

Shared by other characters? Isn't recovery a major thing right now that people are complaining about? Yaknow, the thing that Fox and Falco don't have?

Roy and Falcon get combo'd badly and have just as bad if not worse recoveries. Also (and I'm saying this for the fifth time now), the context is 3.5 where recoveries are getting nerfed overall. Stop talking about these characters in relation to current recoveries that we know will be cut back.

And for ****'s sake, people need to stop saying Fox doesn't have a recovery. Falco yes because his Up B is awful and he falls even faster, but Fox gets so much distance and he has a huge number of mixups when above the stage along with next to no landing lag out of Fire Fox. Below the stage, he should be guaranteed dead yes, but above absolutely not. It's dumb how overstated it is that Fox has a bad recovery. It's more than acceptable, but not even close to bad.

 

[Boiko]

@ Boiko Just tested Fox's up throw up air on Ness. Not a true combo at all. You should be nairing that. And when you can't just learn how to SDI the up air and get one of your brothers to help you practice SDI'ing it.

I'm sorry dude, but you're dead wrong. Even the (at the time of LTC2) best Ness main, Awestin, could not avoid uthrow uair. Nair is a terrible option because the hitbox barely extends below Ness until halfway through the animation. If you were looking for a move to beat it, you're only option would be dair, but at mid percents, that doesn't come out before hit stun and at high percents it trades at best.

The best option IS SDI, you're 100% on that. DIing the throw behind and then SDI up and in is generally your best best, but it's obviously easier said than done, especially since sometimes only the second hit will catch you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XzlHN_a_TE

 

[Mr.Pickle]

along with next to no landing lag out of Fire Fox.

Quoting this because a lot of people tend to forget this. This is honestly an undeniably stupid trait they have, as this is what gives them follow ups off of up b and makes, what should be an unsafe recovery, safe. Every spacey main I've ever talked too said it was stupid, so that's saying something.

 

[Phaiyte]

Quoting this because a lot of people tend to forget this. This is honestly an undeniably stupid trait they have, as this is what gives them follow ups off of up b and makes, what should be an unsafe recovery, safe. Every spacey main I've ever talked too said it was stupid, so that's saying something.

While I kind of agree that he should have some landlag, If you're getting hit by Fox upB, I feel very very bad for you.

 

[leekslap]

Pfffffffffftahahahahahahahahahahahaa

At this point I'm convinced you just post to **** with us.

Yeah, OK it was just bad wording on my part. I meant that anyone with a functioning logical brain would think it would be smaller. The man did give us Ganon's up tilt and Dark Pit.
EDIT: You know, I make these long argument posts to get likes and instead...

 

[trash?]

firefox is also an important thing to note, b/c it's proof people really don't know what they're talking about when they say fox has horrible recovery.

falco, sure, the distance on his is tiny and bad and you can kind of just nudge him far enough off the stage to where it's useless. but fox's? his goes more than long enough, to the point where he can take advantage of the ability to angle it incredibly specifically, 360 degrees, and use it as an easy 50/50, seeing that, unlike someone like sheik, it's nearly impossible to actually punish him if he lands on stage with it, so he gets right back on stage and can continue running around and being a little prick. that's not even getting into his side-b, which has similar strengths with the only difference being that using all of them might take a reasonable bit of skill that's difficult enough to where true consistency isn't fully expected (one-frame timings on shortening, and all that)

 

[leekslap]

firefox is also an important thing to note, b/c it's proof people really don't know what they're talking about when they say fox has horrible recovery.

falco, sure, the distance on his is tiny and bad and you can kind of just nudge him far enough off the stage to where it's useless. but fox's? his goes more than long enough, to the point where he can take advantage of the ability to angle it incredibly specifically, 360 degrees, and use it as an easy 50/50, seeing that, unlike someone like sheik, it's nearly impossible to actually punish him if he lands on stage with it, so he gets right back on stage and can continue running around and being a little prick. that's not even getting into his side-b, which has similar strengths with the only difference being that using all of them might take a reasonable bit of skill that's difficult enough to where true consistency isn't fully expected (one-frame timings on shortening, and all that)

I'm pretty sure every player has instincts needed to survive against spacies, so they can just challenge the up b or go deep and bye bye Fox.

 

[Mr.Pickle]

While I kind of agree that he should have some landlag, If you're getting hit by Fox upB, I feel very very bad for you.

To an extent yes you should feel bad getting hit by firefox, but that mentality proves that it's usually not a good idea to land on the stage with it. Thus the fact that he can confirm off an option that obviously should put him at great risk, and should require thought in its usage, is silly. You pretty much know where I'm coming from so I'm not going to heckle you about it.

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

Yes it makes complete sense that Fox has no lag out of his Up-B while Falcon and Ganon have can-be-punished-by-Ike-FSmash levels of lag

 

[Kneato]

I'm sorry dude, but you're dead wrong. Even the (at the time of LTC2) best Ness main, Awestin, could not avoid uthrow uair. Nair is a terrible option because the hitbox barely extends below Ness until halfway through the animation. If you were looking for a move to beat it, you're only option would be dair, but at mid percents, that doesn't come out before hit stun and at high percents it trades at best.

The best option IS SDI, you're 100% on that. DIing the throw behind and then SDI up and in is generally your best best, but it's obviously easier said than done, especially since sometimes only the second hit will catch you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XzlHN_a_TE

I'm not entirely sure what you are arguing. It sounds like you were saying that Fox needs nerfing because up throw up air on Ness and other characters is a guaranteed kill.

You see people SDI out of the second hit all the time. Even in the match you just linked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XzlHN_a_TE&t=7m38s

 

[Bleck]

"fox has a bad recovery" is pretty much synonymous with "I don't know what I'm talking about"

 

[JOE!]

Fox has a good recovery when it comes to mixup options. It only seems awful when you get him offstage at an angle below the ledge because you have then limited his options servery to one you can predict and punish. If he is above or in line with the edge? You need to guess.

Also, it has good distance overall. So it isn't bad per say, but it is highly gimpable in certain situations, much like a recovery should be.

 

[Empyrean]

Shouldn't, like, Firebird have a hitbox on startup and not Firefox? **** makes no sense.

 

[PsionicSabreur]

The deal is, in any given matchup Fox is rarely at an actual disadvantage on the recovery front, because he has one of the best gimping tools in the game. He definitely has a mediocre - average recovery by 3.0 standards, but it still doesn't mean that much in practice if he isn't consistently losing more stocks to edgeguarding than his opponent.
Granted, there definitely are a handful of matchups where this is the case, and Fox suffers for it, it's just that relatively few characters can actually say "I will hold a consistent advantage over Fox by gimping him more than he gimps me," and have that constitute a meaningful gameplan to build wins around.

 

[victinivcreate1]

Fire Fox is definitely dumb for having no lag. That just needs to be fixed. There are a few others that are like this.

Oh yeah, Falco's recovery is exactly the same in terms of lag you guys. It has 4 frames of landing lag just like Fox's.

Very clear that I'm in a thread that is so biased against Fox, that half the reasoning is not legit.

 

[Leafeon]

At some point my stalking this thread will lead to talk about other melee mains than fox and falco... right?

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

Fire Fox is definitely dumb for having no lag. That just needs to be fixed. There are a few others that are like this.

Oh yeah, Falco's recovery is exactly the same in terms of lag you guys. It has 4 frames of landing lag just like Fox's.

Very clear that I'm in a thread that is so biased against Fox, that half the reasoning is not legit.

You do realize that we acknowledged that Falco's recovery is so **** that touching him offstage results in death, right?

Fine, if you want us to say that Firebird and Firefox need more end lag, then sure. Just not going to make the completely erroneous statement that Fox's recovery is inadequate or that merely getting him off-stage guarantees a stock.

Wondering if angling Fox during the start-up animation to show which direction he's going to head in would make everyone cry out in rage and fury. I mean, Ness and soon Lucas have to deal with that already.

 

[yogurtgun1245]

Wondering if angling Fox during the start-up animation to show which direction he's going to head in would make everyone cry out in rage and fury. I mean, Ness and soon Lucas have to deal with that already.

Spinning Fox and Falco in circles while they're lighting themselves on fire sounds like a good time. I'm all for it.

 

[Boiko]

I'm not entirely sure what you are arguing. It sounds like you were saying that Fox needs nerfing because up throw up air on Ness and other characters is a guaranteed kill.

You see people SDI out of the second hit all the time. Even in the match you just linked.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XzlHN_a_TE&t=7m38s

Nope,not what I'm arguing, LOL.

 

[4tlas]

Well the principles of whether or not Melee top tiers should be allowed to change is most heavily disputed by spacies. Peach got some Brawl stuff, CFal got some buffs (and wasn't exactly a problem to begin with), Jiggs is widely agreed to need changes already, Sheik got some changes to prevent her destroying the whole cast, and Marth... has a non-toxic playstyle anyway. But if you want to talk about non-spacie Melee characters that don't necessarily need to be identical to Melee, I guess that means Jiggs, Sheik, and Marth?

Jiggs needs to have all of her moves have some use. They don't need to all be as good as most characters' moves, since the simple threat of rest is enough to give her presence without them. But currently ftilt, dtilt, sing, and rollout have nearly no use, while bair with her aerial mobility is so good there's no reason to do anything else in neutral. Alternatively, rest could be changed so that she can be buffed/altered elsewhere, giving her a different playstyle entirely.

Sheik has a useless sideB, and I would argue that her fthrow, upthrow, and dair are pretty useless too. I know dair can be great for starting or continuing combos, but it still feels redundant with upair despite placing the hitbox in a different location. But that one is definitely just my preference, I think the move has a place I just don't personally like its place. However fthrow, upthrow, and sideB are pretty clearly just useless. If fthrow had less ending lag or more knockback scaling it could be used to set up for gimps at the ledge, so the player opts for challenging the enemy offstage instead of hoping for bad DI off dthrow for a straight-up kill. Upthrow probably just needs to be a lot faster to end so that Sheik can actually do something. SideB I don't even know. At least in Melee it gimped characters.

Marth has good uses for almost all of his moves and none of them are stupid-good. I think the area he could afford to be altered in is SideB. This move requires commitment, clever positioning, and careful position. It leaves you vulnerable because it limits your options once begun, and I don't think the rewards are ever worth it. Maybe the 3rd spike hit is worth it. This is something that should be considered to be changed back to Brawl, as at least the various options were different enough in hitbox placement and knockback that there were more meaningful choices between them. Also the move reached far enough in Brawl that Marth wasn't leaving himself open to attack the whole time.

 

[Kneato]

Nope,not what I'm arguing, LOL.

Oh okay, that really cleared it up, thanks

 

[Beorn]

Fire Fox is definitely dumb for having no lag. That just needs to be fixed. There are a few others that are like this.

Oh yeah, Falco's recovery is exactly the same in terms of lag you guys. It has 4 frames of landing lag just like Fox's.

Very clear that I'm in a thread that is so biased against Fox, that half the reasoning is not legit.

Everyone needs to realize this. There is no reason fox and falco or any character for that matter should have no landing-lag on there up-b. This is bad design no matter how bad a recovery is.

 

[Eisen]

This is actually a thing I've been meaning to bring up more. I'm glad others are actually discussing it.

I actually wasn't aware the cooldown was only 4 frames. Assuming that's true: Lmao, that's Lucas' magnet startup. So basically it'd be like if Lucas could up-b onto stage and laglessly throw out a single magnet hitbox (comparing to the time Fox can pull out a shine). That's funny.

No doubt firefox is "mediocre" compared to 3.02 standards in terms of distance and utility, but generally speaking it's one of the best recoveries considering the damage/knockback of the move itself, the fact that it can be mixed up into a completely different and super-fast move (side b), being able to angle it anywhere, the distance, and the fact that it's FOX's recovery. It's not like this is Jigglypuff's recovery we're talking about. We're talking about the offensive powerhouse of Melee and Project M. Hell, I can even gimp/offstage KO a good Jiggs easier than I can a good Fox.

Lucas is getting the recovery nerf treatment, and while definitely warranted, it's funny that Fox isn't mentioned as often in the same way. I'm not sure how 3.5 Lucas is going to shape up in terms of being offensive compared to Fox, but right now he's better at it, though I'm assuming that's going to be toned down). I do hope Fox is going to be scaled down as well in some form or another.

I used to have a problem with Falco, and I still kind of do, but not nearly as much as Fox. Falco at least has clear strengths and weaknesses, whereas Fox, it's like... you can combo him? As long as you don't mess up and allow him to shine. But that's really it. Whenever I've tried to play Falco, I've been like "wow, I have to do a lot of work to circumvent his horrible recovery" but Fox? It's just like I don't get punished nearly as hard for not knowing how to play the character. Marth and Falcon are the same way as Falco in that regard.

Technical/fast characters ought to have (generally) a great risk for their rewards. That's why they're "technical". More "average" characters like Mario and Marth should have a decent amount of intuitiveness to them, even though Marth kinda doesn't. He's the case where he's average by way of not being technical, but still having great strengths and weaknesses. Kinda a bad example, but eh.

Point is, if a character like Lucas, Falco, Fox, etc are going to have such amazing offensive and technical power and movement, they need something bad like a recovery. Something OTHER THAN being comboed, because that happens to pretty much any character in the game anyway. Or, if not, then one of their strong traits needs to be toned down; that is, make them more average. So the question is, do people want Fox really strong, fast, and technical with awful recovery? Or do they want him Fast, technical, kinda strong but more rewarding technicality, and kinda ok recovery? I hope the PMDT is addressing it something like this, though I'm assuming they are based on recent blogposts, just as long as they don't continue the trend of spacie pandering.

 

[victinivcreate1]

This is actually a thing I've been meaning to bring up more. I'm glad others are actually discussing it.

I actually wasn't aware the cooldown was only 4 frames. Assuming that's true: Lmao, that's Lucas' magnet startup. So basically it'd be like if Lucas could up-b onto stage and laglessly throw out a single magnet hitbox (comparing to the time Fox can pull out a shine). That's funny.

No doubt firefox is "mediocre" compared to 3.02 standards in terms of distance and utility, but generally speaking it's one of the best recoveries considering the damage/knockback of the move itself, the fact that it can be mixed up into a completely different and super-fast move (side b), being able to angle it anywhere, the distance, and the fact that it's FOX's recovery. It's not like this is Jigglypuff's recovery we're talking about. We're talking about the offensive powerhouse of Melee and Project M. Hell, I can even gimp/offstage KO a good Jiggs easier than I can a good Fox.

Lucas is getting the recovery nerf treatment, and while definitely warranted, it's funny that Fox isn't mentioned as often in the same way. I'm not sure how 3.5 Lucas is going to shape up in terms of being offensive compared to Fox, but right now he's better at it, though I'm assuming that's going to be toned down). I do hope Fox is going to be scaled down as well in some form or another.

I used to have a problem with Falco, and I still kind of do, but not nearly as much as Fox. Falco at least has clear strengths and weaknesses, whereas Fox, it's like... you can combo him? As long as you don't mess up and allow him to shine. But that's really it. Whenever I've tried to play Falco, I've been like "wow, I have to do a lot of work to circumvent his horrible recovery" but Fox? It's just like I don't get punished nearly as hard for not knowing how to play the character. Marth and Falcon are the same way as Falco in that regard.

Technical/fast characters ought to have (generally) a great risk for their rewards. That's why they're "technical". More "average" characters like Mario and Marth should have a decent amount of intuitiveness to them, even though Marth kinda doesn't. He's the case where he's average by way of not being technical, but still having great strengths and weaknesses. Kinda a bad example, but eh.

Point is, if a character like Lucas, Falco, Fox, etc are going to have such amazing offensive and technical power and movement, they need something bad like a recovery. Something OTHER THAN being comboed, because that happens to pretty much any character in the game anyway. Or, if not, then one of their strong traits needs to be toned down; that is, make them more average. So the question is, do people want Fox really strong, fast, and technical with awful recovery? Or do they want him Fast, technical, kinda strong but more rewarding technicality, and kinda ok recovery? I hope the PMDT is addressing it something like this, though I'm assuming they are based on recent blogposts, just as long as they don't continue the trend of spacie pandering.

Lucario is an example of this. Punishes are gdlk. Recovery is actually solid. But that neutral game though. My lord Arceus can't even fix that up lol

 

[Thane of Blue Flames]

Go read the latest blogpost and then never say that Fox never received buffs in PM.

 

[TreK]

Everyone needs to realize this. There is no reason fox and falco or any character for that matter should have no landing-lag on there up-b. This is bad design no matter how bad a recovery is.

Even DK ? /puppy eyes

 

[PootisKonga]

As a new player, I wish to clarify: Are the spacies really so polarizing at higher levels of play? The spacies at my level seem really underwhelming (though I am no hotshot either with them), but when I fight the guy who's played P:M for years his Falco combos literally everyone and everything for days without breaking a sweat. And this guy mains Olimar.

 

[MHTak]

I haven't read most of this thread but I think I know what it's about from what I have read.
When people see that some new characters have very unbalanced traits, it is easy to assume that making characters balanced around the melee toptier is not actually possible. However, in itself the melee toptier is not as unbalanced as the broken traits on some of the pm characters would imply (not strictly balanced though), but fox can still fight well against those 'over buffed' characters.
When the character's strenghts are mostly based on commital threats or safety on commiting to a threat, this is expected, since fox is a mobility character that has the superior threat range from neutral positions. (Fox pressures the opponent more in neutral positioning). It doesn't matter how good or safe your threats are if fox outpositions you, and you cannot prevent fox from outpositioning you if all your strenghts are in commital threats (and not in positioning or defence).
Note that this is only an extreme case; nothing is as simple as that, but i hope you get the idea that commital threatpower is not the way to fight fox. (This should be fairly intuitive.)

I don't have opinion on should the melee toptier remain unchanged, I'm just hinting what kind of tools are needed in this game to keep fox as it is. I do think that no character has yet been actually designed to counter fox, not even anything like it. Designing a balanced game is really hard though.

 

[RomeDogg]

Like stated fox is a glass cannon and people who like to play him like how he works. He is combo food all day. Also his recovery is so easy to predict especially side-b and he can get comboed off stage easy as hell. Also his up-b has so much start up and you can trade with it to keep him offstage if you mess up your timing. Once he is off stage he is typically dead. If the Melee top teirs get redesigned or nerfed I am going to go back to Melee for sure.

 

[Paradoxium]

Or instead of going back to melee you could just play a better character, don't most people play Fox because he's the best?

 

[Pwnz0rz Man]

Like stated fox is a glass cannon and people who like to play him like how he works. He is combo food all day. Also his recovery is so easy to predict especially side-b and he can get comboed off stage easy as hell. Also his up-b has so much start up and you can trade with it to keep him offstage if you mess up your timing. Once he is off stage he is typically dead. If the Melee top teirs get redesigned or nerfed I am going to go back to Melee for sure.

Why is it that people who like to play Fox the way he has been are immune from criticism or change of their character and players who happened to like how Ike 2.0, Lucario 2.1, Sonic 2.5, or Mewtwo 3.0 just have to deal with it? If a character isn't necessarily healthy for the game, then that's just how it is. How easy it is to kill a character matters very little if they have the ability to control the neutral game and easily wipe out their opposition the majority of time. Before the argument of "Melee didn't get changed, people just dealt with it" comes into play (If it would), let's also remember that characters were altered in the PAL game by Nintendo, including Fox.

It's a shame that you'd be willing to completely abandon a game because a character might receive an alteration that you don't happen to agree with. But if you did, did the game really matter to you in the first place?

 

[Rhubarbo]

When people see that some new characters have very unbalanced traits, it is easy to assume that making characters balanced around the melee toptier is not actually possible. However, in itself the melee toptier is not as unbalanced as the broken traits on some of the pm characters would imply (not strictly balanced though), but fox can still fight well against those 'over buffed' characters.

I see this is your first post; welcome to Smashboards!

The thing is, even though Melee is very competitive within the context of it's top tiers, balance falls apart after you start using characters outside its top 6-8. I'd reckon to say only four of Melee's characters are universally viable: Fox, Falco, Marth, and Sheik. The following four's success is contingent and not necessarily in the hands of the player who is using them. Ice Climbers and Jigglypuff center around stringently punishing mistakes. Even though they haven't really been discussed in this thread, I think Jigglypuff and Ice Climbers are equally relevant to this discussion here - their designs are highly questionable. To a lesser extent, Falcon thrives off hard punishes, too. Personally, I would argue that Falcon isn't even top eight worthy, but that's another topic. Peach is relatively fine, if relatively weak. Everyone else, regardless of Amsa's Yoshi and Armada's Young Link, is not really viable.

One ultimate goal of Project M's is to foster a large cast of equally viable character. Right now with 41 (47?) characters, arbitrarily building around a group of 4 greatly compromises balance. One problem, the one I probably care about the most, is that buffing characters to compete with Fox/Falco requires them to be given exceptional basic utility. That means they get really quick aerials, easy combos, and so on. This approach makes the game feel very same-y. For a secular example, turn to dramas, wherein tension is driven by giving characters a limited set of knowledge. If every character knew everything, shows like Sons of Anarchy could not exist (yes, I still think the season six ending was forced as hell.) Bringing it back to Smash, if all characters had as many tools as the Swiss Army knife that is Fox, the variety of viable counter-play would plummet. This may seem unintuitive at first - more options should mean more counter-play - but more options also means there are more best options. If characters don't have clearly defined weaknesses, there is less diversity.

When the character's strenghts are mostly based on commital threats or safety on commiting to a threat, this is expected, since fox is a mobility character that has the superior threat range from neutral positions. (Fox pressures the opponent more in neutral positioning). It doesn't matter how good or safe your threats are if fox outpositions you, and you cannot prevent fox from outpositioning you if all your strenghts are in commital threats (and not in positioning or defence).
Note that this is only an extreme case; nothing is as simple as that, but i hope you get the idea that commital threatpower is not the way to fight fox. (This should be fairly intuitive.)

So, you can't really bait/camp Fox because his neutral game will eat you alive. But you also can't really approach Fox because his spacing options are above average. I suppose you could try to trade with Fox, but his priority will probably get the best of you. If a character discourages, by virtue of their innate superiority, interaction that is fundamental to the game, they are problematic.

I do think that no character has yet been actually designed to counter fox, not even anything like it. Designing a balanced game is really hard though.

Many characters have been given tools against spacies, and these tools have been hated on for the greater part of one year now.

Having to design a hard counter to Fox isn't good game design.

 

[Joe73191]

Fox is perfect right now and should not be changed at all. If anything they should give back his first frame shine invincibility.
Falco again is perfect though is hurt a little too much by the damage decay in his lasers, this should be returned to how it was in Melee. Other than that no other changes should be made.
Marth's dancing blade should be a little closer to Melee's as far as damage and knockback. Other than that no other changes should be made.
Peach is perfect and should not be changed at all.
Shiek's needles need to return to how they were in Melee, the hurt-boxes on the needles need to return. Other than that no other changes need to be made.
Cap Falcon is perfect and doesn't need changes.
Samus is perfect and doesn't need changes.
Pikachu is perfect and doesn't need changes.
Ice climbers and Jigglypuff need some kind of buff, they are both very bad right now, I just don't know what kind of buff they need.

 

[Wazygoose]

I think the core issue here is that Melee currently has such a zealous following. The OP is proposing to balance the cast by nerfing top tier characters instead of buffing lower tier character, and it's a good idea.

I don't think we'd even be debating this if it weren't for the fact that Melee players are extremely sensitive to changing the top tiers--sans Melee, the PM people would just nerf them without even thinking about it. And if they were building PM from the ground up, no one would argue in favor of implementing what the spacies currently have.

PM is a good game and just needs to have the confidence to stick by bold decisions that are in its best interest but that the Melee community will dislike.

 

[Narpas_sword]

sod the melee community, theyre still playing melee. they dont get an input =p

PM has it's own following now.