It was indeed a strong condemnation which i felt like it was nescessary after reading your judgement on Sakurai's thought process, stating that he doesn't recognize what kind of game Melee was.
If you feel offended by it, i deeply apologize for it as it was absolutley not my intention even though i was very aware of my harsh tone.
Thank you for your concern, but, sir, please! I'm not so soft~
I'd prefer it if everyone always had a polite / calm tone all the time, though. It helps to remove emotion and less than rational thought from lots of situations. :P
Here, I suppose I should make a concession. Sakurai might have seen Melee for what it was. I've been denying the possibility that he'd both know good design and deliberately choose to go away from it due to other considerations.
But you seem to misinterpret some points of mine too. My hypotheticals are truely not "for rhethorical purposes only". It's merely a way for me to grasp Sakurai's thoughts using common sense, without the need to judge, misinterpret or overstate any of his design decisions.
I'll trust you that they're not for rhetorical purposes only.
Again, said hypotheticals shed no light on Sakurai's thought process. I could just as easily turn it around on you and say "Wouldn't it make sense for Sakurai to do this because you'd do this?" Even though I wouldn't, and he wouldn't necessarily. They're assertions that are posited as proof.
Because that's the difference in our perspective and where we are coming from: I don't dare (for lack of a better word) trying to judge Sakurai and make assumptions on his actual thoughts, but you do.
In fact you expect me to "shed light onto the actual thought process Sakurai went through in developing Brawl."
There is no way i could do that! I'm only 21 years old and have been studying Game design for merely 2 years. This man has more work experience than i have life experience and i respect that fact.
And i believe that no one should make such bold assumptions on someone else's thoughts when they have such little insight (because you are probably coming from a consumers point of view like i do).
Au contraire! You seem to judge Sakurai: you judge him positively. If your hypotheticals are any indication, you're making plenty of assumptions.
As implied, you'd
have to shed light onto his actual thought process in order for your assertions to hold any weight.
But there is a way you could shed light onto the actual thought process. Amen, I say to you, we have such wonderful things as sourcegaming.info 's vast library of translations at our disposal! You see, I've not been making assumptions all along. Rather, my thoughts have been grounded in the literature and words of Sakurai himself, as we'll see below.
"Attempting to put the casual first most often results in poor design. Casuals by definition do not delve into the nuance of the game, and stay at a superficial level of understanding.
Therefore, their intuitions and opinions about the game are less founded in the nature of the game and more founded on their whims and feelings."
This statement is a perfect example of how you think a casual's individual opinion is less worth than a hardcore's individual opinion and from what kind of view you are perceiving things(i get that you are not a super hardcore player).
By "level of understanding" and "nature of the game" a competitive player understands things like: camping, baiting, zoning, momentum even edgehogging etc. which are advanced strategy concepts if you will. Then there are advanced techniques which get discovered by applying the game mechanical knowledge+ experimenting in the lab. Stuff like cancelling moves which can offer more options in certain scenarios etc.
But that's NOT the nature of the game.It's the nature of 1vs1/2vs2 w/o Items on specific Stages with a certain time limit and the goal to play to win no matter what.
Smash Bros is a freaking SANDBOX FIGHTER.It got a ton of different playmodes. You could play Coin Smash or time attack, or special brawl, with or without items, hell you dont even need to play multiplayer. There is Target smash and Classic mode and Challenges and even a story mode with the sub emmisary.
And the nature of sandbox game is to play like you want to!
There is no denying in that! And only because Sakurai is clearly considering that fact is why we keep getting those different play modes. If he would'nt "put the casual first" we would have never gotten the Sub Space emmisary, as this game mode demanded A LOT of the developement ressources, and it's clearly not a "poor design choice" as there will be millions of people who tell you otherwise.
And that's what i tried to emphasize with my comparison with Rivals of Aether which you find so ridiculous.
Thank you. You've helped me to understand my perspective more from this criticism. I'll clarify, then.
I'm gonna stick to my definition of casual and hardcore. The addition would be there are different types of hardcore players. One to 1v1s, another to 4p FFAs with items on, and so on.
But you'll quickly see that designing for these two is
not mutually exclusive precisely because we can play by our own rules, as you rightly put. All one'd have to do is put more modes in. In fact, that's what Sakurai said and did. See below.
But you share the blame where Rivals of Aether is concerned. Your initial language implied something very different from what you're saying now, at least as I understood it.
Further, in the sense that developing different modes takes resources such as time, money, and effort,
developing for the different audiences is mutually exclusive.
Obviously, this sort of thing should enter into our considerations, and has for Sakurai. I'll blame a lack of clarity on my part for this misunderstanding.
"Sakurai is wrong in his assumption that designing to appeal to the casual and hardcore is mutually exclusive."
Again such a bold statement. He doesn't design for any of his audience mutually exclusive. The Developers from Rivals of Aether do: neutral stages,Stocks,no items,vs mode,Online mode, etc.
But Sakurai is designing his game to be as customizable as possible, with a (can't deny that) slight emphasis on the casual side, or should i say more beginner friendly?
You'd be wrong to frame it as "more beginner friendly." As we've seen, the different modes are for different audiences. It'd make sense that the mode designed for a subset of players would be less amenable to their learning process than the one designed with them in mind.
We clearly see Sakurai's mindset changed over time from this to something else.
An interview from 2001:
http://www.sourcegaming.info/2015/11/05/nintendodreamssbm2/
Here he clearly sees the variety of game modes he included in Melee as avenues to different sorts of players. Melee was a great game for every sort of hardcore player, as well as towards casuals who'd experience a wide variety of flavors, modes, and bells and whistles.
"
Sakurai: That objective hasn’t changed one bit. You can play it casually, but you can also really get into it.
Interviewer: Just as you said.
Sakurai: However, because there are a lot of components where you can really play seriously and get into it, I do worry that it’ll be perceived or treated as a difficult game… However, a lot of elements were added, and with those additions came additional goals of mine, too…I don’t know how to say it exactly."
What we see happening over time is that he, wrongly, thinks the legacy of Melee is as a game too difficult:
http://www.sourcegaming.info/2015/06/29/lookingbackonmelee/
http://www.sourcegaming.info/2015/08/10/sakuraimelee/
Anyway just imagine this: Brawl would be super in depth and balanced, while still mantaining all of the other "casual" features and game modes and even emphasized Hardcore gamemodes like Online with for fun and a proper for glory ranking system.
Now there is this Newcomer to the series. He is the king of the neighborhood like we all were someday.He is constantly rekking his friends with his Ganondorf Final Smash and Item usage.He is having a blast with this game. than he goes Online and gets utterly destroyed by people who are edgehogging him. He thinks this is a stupid, unfair tactics that only cowards would use.
But he also doesnt want to drop Ganondorf because he loves the character and takes a lot of pride in him
The other guys feels perfectly fine with his wins and they both start to engulf in a name calling tag war.
Do you think this is what Sakurai wanted?
I don't imagine Sakurai'd be so short sighted to think such name calling and scrubbery wouldn't happen regardless.
If there is
any way at all to play the game differently, or better in a competitive context, there will
always be people being ****ters and whining. That depends far more on the culture base of the consumer than any of a game's mechanics, though I acknowledge they can exacerbate them.
The only way to solve that is to separate those parties. This is the essence of "For Fun vs For Glory," and one of Smash 4's greatest successes towards its wide array of hardcore audiences. Never once in my 500 or so online Smash 4 battles have I seen tag flaming wars in either game mode, honestly. Maybe I haven't played enough?
Lastly, do you really want to design all your modes with the lowest common denominator? Someone being a sourpuss is their problem, and I'm of the mind such behavior shouldn't be catered to at the detriment of others. They have the mode designed for them, that they choose not to engage in that mode is sad for them, as they'd have much more fun, and their pride in thinking they ought to win at all modes shouldn't be.
Besides, they'd get wrecked anyways as long as there's any skill involved, something Brawl did require a lot of.
Brawl might have selled so well because of the prestige of the series but what about Smash 4? When the casuals know that Brawl is "even more hardcore then the super technical Melee" and that Smash 4 is going to be even more in depth then Brawl?
I'll tell you a lot of my friends wouldn't buy this game, they would be as much interested in the new smash as they are now for the upcoming streetfighter 5. Or the latest Mortal Kombat.
But don't take my friends word for it. Just look at the developement of fighting game history. Smash Bros really stands out in terms of Sales and casual audience. This huge success doesn't come from nothing and especially not from " poor/bad design choices".
Please don't conflate my argument. I'm not saying that Brawl succeeded because of bad design choices, I'm saying that it succeeded
in spite of said choices.
As a casual game, and as a hardcore game towards 4p FFA types, Brawl had tons of successful features and design.
However, Sakurai, because of his changing perspective on Melee, and his failure to see what we both see above, has not designed magnanimously for the expansion of
all audiences.
He's disfavored the hardcore 1v1 and 2v2 audiences by designing poorly where he didn't have to.
Now, my next assertion is based on anecdotal evidence, but consider how many people are in the competitive Smash community and know of Melee's hardcore "nature" (in quotes because we've agreed there's no singular right way or one mode to play, thus many natures). In my experience, even my most competitive of friends from long ago, when I brought up EVO or any of the gods to them, One reaction was "oh, yeah, I've heard of that," vaguely, and when pressed for details couldn't say much more beyond some basics, the other being "no, I don't."
I'm wagering the vast majority of
casual players,
and most of the personally hardcore players simply haven't cared after all this time. They've had their fun and moved on. It's one specific subset which hears about the competitive community, and most in my experience are open to it and not close-minded boobs.
As Bastiat said: "you will oblige me to call out, 'Stop there! your theory is confined to that which is seen; it takes no account of that which is not seen.'"
![sWiTcHeRoO [疾~斬]](/data/avatars/s/207/207189.jpg?1476638676){kind=avatar}
