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The bad wing : thoughts on why brawl is so hated by melee players

TOGOpuff

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I've been playing brawl and watching streams for quite a long time now and everytime brawl is on stream it's the same hate. Everytime. That started bothering me and i started looking at brawl matches from a different angle. Finally i came to some conclusions that i want to share with the community about how tedious competitive brawl matches can become, not only for viewers but for players as well. All in all this thread is about an opinion. It is not meant to spread brawl hate nor is hate-brawl-oriented. It's just some points that i want to share with brawl community based on what i've been seeing in competitive streams all around and a attempt to help the commumity.
First things first, i'll start this writing talking about technical points. Brawl is way slower than melee, that's obvious, therefore it requires not less skill but a rather different techniques usage. To melee players, used to fast paced wavedashing game it's slow and untechnical when it's just a completely different techniques set with it's own technologies and possibilities. But this difference isn't flawless and competitive community has been losing space because of some matchups that aren't fun to watch nor play. Basically i will stand out here the terrible scenario that was 1 stock brawl #GOML grand finals (which just happened). Matchup was MK vs IC. We probably knew that would happen (or MK dittos or IC dittos). I don't remember the last time i saw a brawl grand finals without meta knight dittos or ice climbers vs meta knight or ice climber dittos. Mostly because of reliability and the huge difference between how better they are in comparison to others characters.
The regularity on which these characters reach finals everytime we see brawl matches and the terrible tiering we have that put A+ characters WAY below S and SS makes the game boring even before match starts. Adding the slow pace of the game and the metagame of both top tier characters we have a worst case scenario of who is punishing / pressuring better and the game becomes dull with skill spamming and easy hit landing. Specially when it comes to pro matches and tournaments where people don't want to risk their wins trying to play other characters or raising some freestyle high risk high reward combos. The 'unbeatable' matchups scenario becomes a real pain to brawl community as a whole and we lose the spotlight to more balanced melee and PM. Commentators have a hard time creating hype on finals because it seems we're watching the same movie over and over again and trying to take something new out of it. Won't happen.
With some wonders about this i hosted a basement brawl tournament with some friends apllying 1 custom rule: no high tier characters allowed (aka no IC or MK). We are not that high level players compared to beasts like M2k but i can say that playing lower tier characters increased game hypeness and matchup possibility, we had more fun playing it and was pleasant to watch. Freestyle combos came back and we could finally enjoy the game without that MK boring pressure. We also played 3 and 2 stock doubles casually and even more matchup possibilities (using lowest tier characters) happened.
I'm not saying that we should ban MK and IC from tournaments from now on because i don't even see this possibility as viable but i think that if we don't change something on brawl scenario we will keep losing space to other smash bros games and might end up forgotten on a corner with some random players doing 2 brackets of 4 players each in a black and white tv with $5 dollars on the pot. And i don't want this to happen. I can see some possibilities of escaping this scenario and i hope you people can also add your thoughts on this. mostly i thought about this custom rulesets to add hype to my gameplan:

> 1 stock brawl 3 minute matches (custom rule : no IC/ MK allowed)
> 3 or 2 stock doubles (custom rule: forbidden usage of 2 MK, 2 IC or MK/IC on same team)
(this is how i've been running tournaments from now on and has been working great on casuals as well)

* i know i said i wasn't saying we should ban MK and IC but i think this is still the fastest way to bring some hype to game and create new matchup possibilities and that's the solution i found to my small hometown community *

I know those aren't solutions and probably won't be applied to community as a whole and i also think lots of players will think i'm crazy by saying/doing this but i see competitive scenario is flooded with Dejávu matchups and terrible paced games and one way to add more hype to our scene would be taking out that which is making those "i know what's going to happen" matchups, and try to return to a freestyle oriented scenario. Brawl isn't broken because it's a bad game but because how we're exploiting the terrible tiering the game has and how boring/ not freestyle matches became. I think next step to keep brawl living will be adapting rules so we can renew / rebalance the game.
Any thoughts on this ?
 

Thor

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TOGOpuff said:
Brawl is way slower than melee
Not always true - I saw this one Jigglypuff at our local beat a Zelda by timing her out. And it went to game 3 - they managed to hold the rest of the bracket up by like 3 sets doing this [plus coaching between each round, was almost 30 minutes]. And yes this was a Melee match. If that's not slow, then there's no way in hell Brawl is slow.

Fall speeds are slower, but that's it for actual movement speeds - Sonic is actually faster than the other characters in Melee, and Captain Falcon has about the same speed. It's really the hitstun coding error that makes Brawl less combo-heavy and therefore not rack up percents as quickly (I'll admit Brawl tends to have slower percent building, although the top tiers in Brawl can rack percentage quickly through various methods - MK uair strings, ICs grabs, Olimar...throwing stuff, Diddy Banana strings, Marth dancing blade, Falco grabs and jabs, Snake explosives and tilts, Pikachu QAC lock, ZSS dsmash stuff - more examples probably [like Trela kicking butt from 3:50 to the end of the first match: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5I8iJ3cBs8 and Kirby's 38% strings from near 0%, but I'm not familiar with how others rack percents quickly, and some characters are admittedly less efficient]).

TOGOpuff said:
I don't remember the last time i saw a brawl grand finals without meta knight dittos or ice climbers vs meta knight or ice climber dittos.
APEX 2013 comes to my head right off the top [Salem] - I'm pretty sure ESAM was in LF in Apex 2014 and brought out Pika (for a game, should've done it sooner). There were also phenomenal non-MK dittos earlier in bracket, it just so happened that like the top 5 had mainly MK/ICs (Ally repped Snake I'm pretty sure at like 5th). SKTAR 2 was Diddy vs Snake GFs (ADHD won, although he got some [in my opinion somewhat unfair] help from a verbal crowd member, to MVD's detriment - though ADHD might've won anyway). Heck, Denti was the other guy - there was no MK in top 3, and it was indeed MK-legal (ESAM was knocked out 2-1 by CT Tyrant if memory serves). It has been a rather long time though.

TOGOpuff said:
The 'unbeatable' matchups scenario becomes a real pain to brawl community as a whole and we lose the spotlight to more balanced melee and PM.
The mental aspect of Brawl being uninteresting to causals as compared to almost DBZ-like combos is the real reason Brawl loses viewers to Melee, PM, and TAS videos (of any of the games). Melee isn't more balanced - the combination of Sheik, Fox, Falco, and Marth invalidates more or less the rest of the cast, with the exception of like ICs, Armada, Hbox and Axe (and Axe still doesn't win major nationals, he just does really well). I'm exaggerating a little, but ICs, Peach, and Jiggs are still hurt by the Fox MUs (and Falco, or more like PPMD) and Pikachu only makes it far because Axe is godlike. I'm pretty sure Kage picked up Fox and Hax doesn't really use Falcon ever anymore [and I don't see S2J, Lord, SilentSpectre, etc. going top 8 or whatever very much], and then you're into Doc (not sole mained by Shroom anymore) and then Samus (HugS and Plup are good, but Samus has mediocre MUs versus all the non-top spacies I believe), and then we're to...Luigi (there are good Luigis out there, but again, they fall short in nationals). Go below that and no one's tourney viable, with only 4 characters seeing use beyond a few incredible players. Go to Brawl and we have MK, ICs, and Dedede invalidating most of the cast (Dedede's almost nothing, he used to be a big problem) with Snake and Falco messing some stuff up too, but Diddy, Olimar, Snake, and Falco [needs a backup or DEHF skill and Shugo-level MU knowledge] being usable, and ZSS is also strong in a few player's hands. Trela was pretty viable (he was kind of like the Axe of Brawl in my opinion - making Lucario seem better than he probably is) and there are a few different Marths, as well as a few Wolf mains. Japan has a few strong Pits and Foxes as well. So if you look at the cast, Melee's not really more balanced - you have like 6 characters versus like 10, and those 6 make the rest of the cast unusable while it's 10 in Brawl (and this Peach main named Kie is making some rethink the Peach:MK MU, and Vex is causing questions about the Dedede:ICs MU).

PM is probably a bit more balanced, mainly because it's by design and has patches. Those early Sonic, Ike, and Ivysaur builds tho.

TOGOpuff said:
Commentators have a hard time creating hype on finals because it seems we're watching the same movie over and over again and trying to take something new out of it. Won't happen.
I find some commentary pretty hype [or at least hilarious], moreso in doubles (Sky's too good, especially at 22:45 in the first one : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yKSEatZcegs , https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcm23rKbjMg ), and I can sort of see your point, but I also find commentary pretty informative (in one I learned that MK's nado causes him 20% extra knockback if hit out of it). I'll admit hyping ICs vs MK is hard though. I truly appreciated the commentary of the APEX 2014 GFs, but I think that's because those commentators are very skilled at commentary.

TOGOPuff said:
(custom rule: forbidden usage of 2 MK, 2 IC or MK/IC on same team)
ICs literally shouldn't matter in teams unless you have a pressure god as your teammate keeping someone off you - notice it's very hard to find pros using ICs in doubles (ESAM doesn't, I don't think I've ever seen Vinnie's ICs either). If you have a double ICs team actually working, I tip my hat to them.

I don't know how to solve the problems you've posed - if I did I'd offer a suggestion. Melee players don't like the game because it's not Melee - they can't wavedash, L-cancel, JC grab, or combo as much (despite the existence of combos, there are fewer of them) so they call it a bad game and go back to Melee. I'm simplifying a little, but boil it down and that's a lot of what it amounts to.

EDIT: I somehow forgot that aMSA is viable too (admittedly I think at least a few guys like M2K, PPMD, and Mango will try to learn Yoshi inside and out to make sure they aren't beaten by aMSA, but he did well at two different tournaments, therefore he would have been worth mentioning above). If he keeps it up though, that just means Yoshi will move up, and it's Yoshi's many unique boons and properties (parry, armored jump) that will let him move up if he does, not that low tiers are all massively underexplored (Mewtwo at least, isn't gonna move up much - M2K and Taj can do work, but he's not tourney-viable).
 
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TOGOpuff

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First i really appreciate the time you took to reply me. The videos you linked are great and refreshed my memory on great matches i'd already forgotten!

IC ban on doubles happened here because we decided to completely ban them from our small community as a whole for now (at least while playing with my friends on homemade tournaments/money matches)

I realize there are pretty hyped commentaries for brawl but some others are like "let's get technical because there's no hype" which is sad. Also there aren't people cheering for the game regularly (no crowd whatsoever) and i think this aspect is the one that needs most improvement. I see we have no crowd because we end up on boring MU. Today's finals was exactly like this. I am a brawl player and i couldn't watch it due to the boreness of it. m2k was just spamming tornadoes while IC were trying to live.

Melee really isn't that much balanced but i feel people try harder to bring something new on melee (maybe because there are more players...not sure)

i also don't know how to solve those problems but i thank you again for your reply and i hope we can find a way to make brawl better than it looks now.
 

Jackson

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I could never hate on Brawl, as it was my first Smash game. That said, I wish Meta Knight was banned from the start. I think things would've turned out differently.
 

Thor

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Also, funny enough, I saw a Brawl match recently with Keitaro and Coontail commenting [if I could I'd just link it... I think it was a Collision VII and it's on Youtube but I don't know beyond that], there was Melee hype or something, and I think it was Coontail [or maybe it was Keitaro] who said "Shoutouts to Melee, it's a great game." You'd never hear those words about Brawl from any Melee commentator, both because of the on-stream hate it would generate, and because most Melee commentators don't like Brawl.

Despite all the hate that Brawl receives (and they know it), the fact that Brawl commentators would compliment Melee (while still complimenting Brawl and enjoying/commentating the match) really says something to me about how Brawl players view Melee as compared to how Melee players view Brawl. And it leaves me wondering if it's really the Brawl players who need to change, or if the Melee players need to fix their attitudes, regardless of how we play our game.
 
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Jackson

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Also, funny enough, I saw a Brawl match recently with Keitaro and Coontail commenting [if I could I'd just link it], there was Melee hype or something, I think it was Coontail who said "Shoutouts to Melee, it's a great game." You'd never hear those words from any Melee commentator, both because of the on-stream hate it would generate, and because most Melee commentators don't like Brawl.

Despite all the hate that Brawl receives (and they know it), the fact that Brawl commentators would compliment Melee (while still complimenting Brawl and enjoying/commentating the match) really says something to me about how Brawl players view Melee as compared to how Melee players view Brawl. And it leaves me wondering if it's really the Brawl players who need to change, or if the Melee players need to fix their attitudes, regardless of how we play our game.
This is a great way to look at it. It really makes me sad how Brawl is constantly ripped on. It never deserves it.
 

BlueXenon

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The first thing you should know is that the people who make fun of brawl in twitch chats are extremely ignorant about brawl and hate it just because it is brawl, and most of them are bad at all smash games, lol. They will always hate brawl for as long as it doesn't have wavedashing, they don't care if it's hype or not.

Metaknight and Ice Climbers are not even nearly as dominant as people think. These characters are dominant in one region, NJ, and this is the region where brawl is streamed most often. NY/NJ is the region with the best metaknight and ice climber players in the world, so obviously they are going to win every tournament there. I'm not saying metaknight is not broken, he is, but he is not as dominant as people think he is.

In California, you will see Falco and Peach in grand finals very often. In Japan, you will see mid/high tier characters in grand finals such as Wario, ZSS, and Peach. Metaknight has only won two brawl tournaments in Japan so far in 2014.
 

TOGOpuff

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Also, funny enough, I saw a Brawl match recently with Keitaro and Coontail commenting [if I could I'd just link it... I think it was a Collision VII and it's on Youtube but I don't know beyond that], there was Melee hype or something, and I think it was Coontail [or maybe it was Keitaro] who said "Shoutouts to Melee, it's a great game." You'd never hear those words from any Melee commentator, both because of the on-stream hate it would generate, and because most Melee commentators don't like Brawl.

Despite all the hate that Brawl receives (and they know it), the fact that Brawl commentators would compliment Melee (while still complimenting Brawl and enjoying/commentating the match) really says something to me about how Brawl players view Melee as compared to how Melee players view Brawl. And it leaves me wondering if it's really the Brawl players who need to change, or if the Melee players need to fix their attitudes, regardless of how we play our game.
Yeah that is a point i completely forgot to mention on the thread and i completely agree there should be a attitude change on some melee enthusiasts around the globe. I've been defending brawl for some time and i recognize that often when it's said "we'll be streaming brawl" before matches start melle haters are flooding chats everywhere. Attitude does need to change but i also think we could find new ways to improve brawl experience.

The first thing you should know is that the people who make fun of brawl in twitch chats are extremely ignorant about brawl and hate it just because it is brawl, and most of them are bad at all smash games, lol. They will always hate brawl for as long as it doesn't have wavedashing, they don't care if it's hype or not.

Metaknight and Ice Climbers are not even nearly as dominant as people think. These characters are dominant in one region, NJ, and this is the region where brawl is streamed most often. NY/NJ is the region with the best metaknight and ice climber players in the world, so obviously they are going to win every tournament there. I'm not saying metaknight is not broken, he is, but he is not as dominant as people think he is.

In California, you will see Falco and Peach in grand finals very often. In Japan, you will see mid/high tier characters in grand finals such as Wario, ZSS, and Peach. Metaknight has only won two brawl tournaments in Japan so far in 2014.
Thank you for that! Honestly! I am a brazilian player and i have few to no access on communities that are not on stream all the time so i basically see same players playing same characters all the time and people who play with me mostly watch same streams i do so our scene is pretty much like NY/NJ ... maybe i should check other brawl scenes and really get the grab of what's going on besides main streams. This post was a mind opener on my thoughts about how brawl was being playing all around and i'll be sure to check more players than i already do. Banning MK on my hometown was a viable option so we could leave a certain "comfort zone" where we got to a point the 50% of the matches were MK vs MK (ok we're like 10 people but still it becomes a boring scenario seeing MK dittos match over match over match)
All in all i hope we find a solid place to stay when SSB4 is out . I really believe we can live through it but i still assume that we can improve this game way more than we tryed. Maybe not singles, but i like brawl doubles better than melee's, for example. 1 stock 1 vs 1 brawl was also a nice thing and even some brawl haters liked it... so i think we're finding ways to keep this game living through years (:
 
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I started out on Brawl for several years and moved to Melee for about an equal amount of time I did for brawl. I have come to dislike it for being not a very rewarding experience. Melee requires a finer tuning of your adjustments more so than Brawl does and thus feels like it has a lower maximum skill capacity. With various things in Melee you need to land consistent attacks in a narrow time frame. Often this is due to how quickly characters move around. By moving around faster you have a narrow set of frames in which your action is valid to make some accomplishment. With slower movement like in brawl your window is greatly improved. Plus, your window is highly improved if you added in buffering for Brawl.

In short, Melee to me requires me to work harder to play well for a certain amount of success compared to Brawl.
 

Jackson

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I started out on Brawl for several years and moved to Melee for about an equal amount of time I did for brawl. I have come to dislike it for being not a very rewarding experience. Melee requires a finer tuning of your adjustments more so than Brawl does and thus feels like it has a lower maximum skill capacity. With various things in Melee you need to land consistent attacks in a narrow time frame. Often this is due to how quickly characters move around. By moving around faster you have a narrow set of frames in which your action is valid to make some accomplishment. With slower movement like in brawl your window is greatly improved. Plus, your window is highly improved if you added in buffering for Brawl.

In short, Melee to me requires me to work harder to play well for a certain amount of success compared to Brawl.
That's definitely true about the skill cap. You know, I started playing Project M last week, and although I'm terrible, it's really fun. I'll always love Brawl, but who knows, I might end up the same way as you.
 

#HBC | Red Ryu

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I get why people don't like Brawl from an outside perspective, and I can respect that.

I only get bothered when it's hypocritical or it a blatant lie.

As for the OP, only thing I believe would consider a ban is Metaknight. Ice Climbers have shown they actually do lose to some characters pretty consistently or at least struggle with them.
 

TOGOpuff

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I get why people don't like Brawl from an outside perspective, and I can respect that.

I only get bothered when it's hypocritical or it a blatant lie.

As for the OP, only thing I believe would consider a ban is Metaknight. Ice Climbers have shown they actually do lose to some characters pretty consistently or at least struggle with them.
Yeah. as i've said once or twice in this thread IC bans is more a hood thing. It's not something i think is extremely necessary. MK in the other hand is pretty unbalanced and wreck some games...
 

Lukingordex

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IC ban on doubles happened here because we decided to completely ban them from our small community as a whole for now (at least while playing with my friends on homemade tournaments/money matches)
hmm do your guys have a competitive scene in Rio de Janeiro? idk if you already know about 1upsmash forum, but we organize PM, Melee and smash 64 offline tourneys (brawl died a little, but we'll organize a Brawl one in Anime Friends 2014). Also, a big tournament with all the 4 smashs (PM included) called TMSS 2 happened in Rio de Janeiro 2 weeks ago.
Please Private Message me if you're interest about knowing 1upsmash more.

Also for the Thread, I'll give my opinion:
Melee is a game that requires lots off techskill and some mind, while brawl requires a lot of mind and some techskill. People may think melee is harder/more fun to watch because they see more action while in brawl the defensive game is predominant.

People doesn't recognize that's really hard to actually have a good mind and reads, which is needed to be a "good player" in brawl. This creates the boring atmosphere in brawl matches that contributes for the "hate" melee players have.

About MK and ICs:
MK is top tier, everyone knows that, but... why exactly he's top tier?
Brawl is a game about punishing and avoiding being punished, and guess what? MK's moveset is the hardest to predict and punish in the game, for that reason, he ended up being the better character in the game.
A similar case happens with ICs: they have the strongest punish on the game (CGs), which made them counter lot's of other characters and being considered the second best character on the game.

If I were a TO, I would easily ban MK. He breaks the counterpick system, that's ridiculous.
I don't think ICs have to be banned, because even though they may have that CG, they still have exploitable weaknesses that doesn't make him a character with the MK level of superiority.
 
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Thor

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Lukinhasss said:
He breaks the counterpick system, that's ridiculous.
One thing I've suggested, though I don't think it will ever catch on, is a multi-ban system, where there's like 3 extra stages that help certain characters out against MK somewhat, and MK can abuse horribly against the rest of the cast, and moving to a 2 ban system, with a caveat - a person playing against an MK (even if they are an MK) can ban ALL or two of the extra stages that are included with one ban (Ex: if we currently accept the 5 normal stages + PS 1 + Halberd, then we add Delfino, RC, and Brinstar, the person opposing an MK can ban Delfino, RC, and Brinstar using one ban, or just two if they like one of those stages - so just Delfino and RC if they're a DK that likes Brinstar or something), thus removing MK's ability to abuse them versus certain characters while giving non-MK players a wider variety of options, and ultimately resulting in a wider stage list when non-MK players play, if they choose to use this.

MK players will probably call BS, but I think this could work, if we look over what stages help characters (ANY character) against MK (actually, I originally thought just having a "for MK players" stage list and a "for non-MK players" stage list, where MK players have to ban from the large and others can ban from the smaller, and MK players can't go to non-MK player stages except under the general gentleman's rule, would work too, but this goes even farther, and would incite even more ire). Admittedly, the MK player will just ban the stage that the opposition is helped by most, but it still leaves the non-MK a wider array of CPs at least (ex: they are less likely to lose their favorite neutral).

An MK ban could also work, but the stage list change is somewhat more subtle, and might drive away less players - for example, Zero [or other top MK main - M2K (though I think he has a Falco so he might come), Nario (also has a Falco), CT Tyrant (might have a Falco? I don't recall seeing one but it's possible), Otori (don't think he has a Falco), whomever] might not bother showing up if no MK, but if people want them there, he/they might still come if he gets a normal stage list and people get an expanded stage list, because he gets his character and his stages, he just also happens to have to possibly play on stages where the other character is helped out a lot by certain elements of the stage.

Lukinhass said:
Melee is a game that requires lots off techskill and some mind, while brawl requires a lot of mind and some techskill. People may think melee is harder/more fun to watch because they see more action while in brawl the defensive game is predominant.
While I agree Brawl definitely needs a higher level of mind than Melee, Melee still has a ton of mindgames - Melee is just condensed mindgames and lends itself to flow-chart like situations (Edgeguarding, some tech-chasing, combos) while Brawl rarely has auto-pilot-reaction situations (like ledge-guarding CF in Melee) - they occur but less frequently or for shorter periods of time.

Brawl also CAN be offensive, but usually defense is strong because there's a wider array of options - Nairo always looks like an offense-based player to me - I'd not be surprised if he had at some point said only ever shields/dodges if he doesn't think he can intercept a/an (counter)attack with his own assault or else as a bait.
 
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Thor

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Jackson said:
The only problem I see is that I don't think any stage really hurts MK. He is still OP on all tournament stages.
It's not really about hurting MK per se, it's more about stages that help other characters get a boost in general, and so make MK's natural advantage in nearly every MU reduced somewhat. It's sort of like the reasoning for leaving Hyrule in the Smash 64 ruleset to buff Fox, and so by extension make Pikachu not as advantaged versus Fox - we don't actually make Pikachu lose on the stage or drop massively in effectiveness, but we make Fox's merits stronger and help alleviate his weak points a bit.

This may be outdated, but I've read, for instance, that Brinstar is a great Ness and DK counter-pick stage because it's harder to gimp them, thanks to the acid. MK doesn't have this problem, and since it's not that common for Ness/DK to land a meteor on MK, it's not like the acid helps him all that much. That said, my (probably outdated) information also says that he wrecks ICs here, among other characters, because acid.

So if this is added, MK either has no extra bans (or if there are two good added DK stages, loses both to bans) or else DK gets Brinstar to help him out, but ICs can still just say "nope" and ban them all versus MK.

This also opens the door for characters with IC problems to take them to Brinstar or RC (unless those are the two bans, but then they have their choice of any other stage not banned) so that ICs are less polarizing.

There are more extreme stages we could add (for example, Shadow Moses Island: I believe Falco can get an infinite laser lock thanks to the walls - that would certainly make the laser lock a lot more important - also might help Diddy's bananas lock if you get the spacing just right with two separate bananas? And don't forget that SDIing ROB dtilt (and Zelda dtilt, though she's really bad) in the corner is kind of obnoxious...) but I don't know how MK abuses this stage (I can guess) and it probably places an emphasis on play considered degenerate (it would be an instant King Dedede favorite against heavier characters, and thus an auto-ban...).
 
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Double Helix

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Coming from a Melee player who plays Brawl seldomly, I would like to say that I enjoy Brawl, but I can't help but feel like, due to my own lack of skill, Metaknight is so much stronger than the rest of the cast that in order for me to even have fun, I have to play Ice Climbers or Meta Knight to have a chance. I know that I would love to play Olimar, but it is very hard to find videos of anybody other than Nietono. I feel as Melee is still more balanced because, even though I play Ness, I can still face non-Sheik players and have a chance.

The difference between Melee and Brawl when it comes to making it more interesting/diverse (in my opinion) is the ability for every character (with a few exceptions) to combo Fox and Falco, Jiggs is a matchup that people need to know, but even I can play that matchup as Ness, and Sheik is...well Sheik. Sheik is the main barrier causing low-tiers to be unplayable, but even I can play Fox and Falco in some capacity. I am not a Brawl player, so I can't speak on its behalf or against it (feel free to reply so that I can actually know). I DO know that most players in Japan have a pocket Diddy (who, last I looked, was 2nd on Japan's tier list), like most Melee players have a pocket Fox or Falco.

I respect Brawl players immensely. I personally do not know how you can practice a lot of the tech skill required to play at a high level by yourself. Maybe you can't. I know that if I couldn't practice wavedashing, L-cancelling, SHFFLing, and other tech skill stuff for Melee on my own, I wouldn't be writing this here now. I hear of the famed glide-tossing in Brawl, but I have no idea what it is, and I personally don't actually know a lot of the tech skill stuff in Brawl, because I feel as though the strength of Meta Knight is too great a barrier to overcome. His ability to space, his speed, and my general badness at this game makes it very disheartening. When it becomes a Meta Knight ditto, on the other hand, it is usually a close game (even if I lose more often than win), and I feel like I have a chance.

I got a little off topic. I love Brawl. It is fun. While it looks like it takes less skill, a lot of it is just a different type of skill (that mostly comes by playing a lot). Another problem is that Melee's meta has had a much longer time to evolve, so you have had years of having wavedashing, L-cancelling, shield dropping, and other techniques thrown in your face, and you just had to say something along the lines of, "But...but...you are just nastolgic" or something equally ineffective and not really constructive to your argument. Now you can throw back glide tossing, the fact that (I think) you guys also have ledge cancelling, and whatever else you actually have (I really have no clue).

Part of it could be due to commentators, indirectly of course. I know because Melee happens so fast, it can be hard to commentate, but I really think Brawl is slow enough and enough thought and time is put into positioning that you can better fix the primary problem I have with Smash commentary: The commentary is by (insert Smash game here) players for (insert the same Smash game here) players. I know I can't personally fix that problem because it IS tough to do, but I think if Melee players understood the technical aspects of Brawl better, and what it looks like (and vice versa), there would overall be less hate.

I personally do not like the idea of introducing bad stages to make more matchups playable. Yes there needs be more than one stage, but adding stages to all of the rulesets causes a problem (in my opinion): the top results increase in variance for the wrong reasons. Banning characters is WORSE. You just make the time someone put into a character useless. It really doesn't matter how good someone is at a game. Most people have put too much time into a character to ban any of them, especially since these games do not get any patches at all. It could also hurt the international scene hilariously. Japan probably wouldn't come to tournaments that they couldn't play Meta Knight at.

Sorry for the long-winded response. I wanted to shed a little bit of light on my views, as a Melee player, on Brawl. I will keep playing the game. I will keep liking it. But I will probably forever love Melee more.
 

GunGunW

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Melee was my favorite, but I liked brawl too. There were just a couple of things about Brawl that were disappointing.
 

Thor

Smash Champion
Joined
Sep 26, 2013
Messages
2,009
Location
UIUC [school year]. MN [summer]
Double Helix said:
it is very hard to find videos of anybody other than Nietono
Look for Denti, Logic, and Brood (and maybe Rich Brown). These are 4 different pretty high level Olimars you can look for (Denti was in WF [and LF] of SKTAR 2, I think Brood was 2nd at APEX 2010 (that's really old though), I've seen Logic's name floating around and I've seen Rich Brown once whistle 4 MK uairs in a row, among other matches).

Double Helix said:
I feel as Melee is still more balanced because, even though I play Ness, I can still face non-Sheik players and have a chance.
I thought Ness got rekt by Falco and Marth lol (and Fox). Also, Melee has more high-tiers seen as viable, but they shut the cast down together to a larger degree in my opinion. If you have MK and ICs answers in Brawl, you've actually covered a huge gap - in Melee, spacies answers are about half the problem.

I will say that a bunch of your post talks about "If I play MK it's close." So... play MK. Most people pick a character because it's who they feel they can best win with or someone they have fun with - you have the most fun with MK and you can win with him, so play him! I used to have fun with MK, but everyone seems to dislike him and I also really enjoy Pikachu and Falco, so I have a lot more Pikachu practice with some Falco, but I'll still give MK a good hard look (and sometimes use him) against ICs since I haven't built up a Peach, TL, or ZSS yet (gonna pick one at some point, or else maybe Snake, Diddy, Marth, or even Ike).

Glide toss = roll + a to throw an item while moving in a standing animation - after the move is over you can do anything you can normally do. In a lot of ways it's like wavedashing. The best character for this is Diddy Kong - glide-tossing one of his bananas into either a dsmash for KO/percent or a grab if the banana hits shield are two of his best options, and make him so good because this approach is more or less safe.

Double Helix said:
introducing bad stages
Actually, I don't like Shadow Moses either - that's the extreme example. But stages like Brinstar and RC aren't bad stages in many people's opinions - they were banned because MK could exploit them to such a large degree versus the rest of the cast that for top players against characters that don't also get a massive boon from the stages, the stage was an auto-win or auto-ban. My reasoning is that if we add in stages that are "questionable because MK abuses them" but don't let MK abuse them, the stages have a lot fewer problems, and they also increase stage variety, which is generally assumed to be good and better to watch (when M2K, his partner (Vex?), Nairo and ADHD gentleman's ruled in one tourney, they went to custom stages Bath and Maze, and viewers on stream actually went up because the match was so funny to watch and different from the norm - many think destaling the stage list, so to speak, would get more people involved, but it breaks MK - this solution is the best of both, by not breaking him further while increasing variety).

But no, I'm not saying "Just let Falco take MK to Bridge of Eldin/Temple, that's fair!", it's more like "Brinstar's a decent stage and generally not considered broken except sharking and whatever else MK does there, let people who want to play that stage who aren't MK use it."

Double Helix said:
Banning characters is WORSE. You just make the time someone put into a character useless. It really doesn't matter how good someone is at a game. Most people have put too much time into a character to ban any of them, especially since these games do not get any patches at all. It could also hurt the international scene hilariously. Japan probably wouldn't come to tournaments that they couldn't play Meta Knight at.
While this is empirically proven (at least, according to what I know, the part about Japan), and I don't support a ban, many are worried that sans MK ban, people will simply stop playing the game, so they think A) lose MK mains but have some Brawl players or B) lose them all to new games, and view A) as more desirable. I don't think this will happen, and I don't think banning MK is an answer, but unlike with Sheik, where counters were discovered, the closest thing we have, via MU chart, is Pikachu (which is heavily disputed) and Falco on FD (although I'm pretty sure Falco is even or maybe even wins on Bridge of Eldin, given the silliness of that stage and the removal of gimping - again, that's why it's banned, not to mention DDD).

And many casual Brawl who play Melee laugh at the idea of a ban, but this was suggested by people who care about Brawl and are frustrated at the scene's shrinking size - I can't say I know enough to really know the ins and outs of the debate, but I'm sure there are dedicated ban and anti-bans who would destroy or vastly deepen these arguments.

GunGunW said:
Melee was my favorite, but I liked brawl too. There were just a couple of things about Brawl that were disappointing.
Well put. I don't think either game was without flaws, but I'll admit I know people who refuse to play Brawl because they just can't look past random tripping or what was in Melee that's not in Brawl. It's nice to see there are people who give the game a chance in spite of stuff like that.

Personally I don't think I have a huge favorite. I might like Brawl more than Melee if I could play both a lot, but I have like no one to play Brawl with because I know a ton of Melee/PM players who routinely hate on Brawl, so I just have to zip my lips and work on my Falco tech so I can enjoy the Smash games I'm able to play with others.

PM is not my favorite for sure though, because to my understanding, it was more or less made as an attempt to destroy Brawl for good. Thankfully it doesn't seem to have worked (yet).
 
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Double Helix

Smash Journeyman
Joined
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432
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Technically, Ness gets destroyed by most of the cast. But with the exception of Sheik, I feel as though I have a chance against the whole cast. The problem with the "So...play MK" argument, is I have the most fun playing Olimar, which is great, but until I simply pick up the game more, MK is the easier and more powerful character. It is easily comparable to Melee in the sense that I could just play Falco or Fox or any of the top characters, but I have more fun playing Ness.

In my opinion, if you feel as though more stages should be added, I encourage you to just try to push for open-minded competition and further use the gentleman's clause. It is there to make competition more fun (not to mention more fun for the viewers). The main reason allowing those stages to non-MK players, is you A) make the stage a counterpick or B) make the stage a neutral, which in both cases, could FORCE a player off of MK, or it can prevent someone's counterpick MK for tough matchups. For instance, if I make it far enough into bracket, I may want to play Fox against Sheik because the Ness/Sheik matchup is awful. However, if my opponent were able to go to, say, Peach's Castle, as long as I don't play Fox, it allows them to force me to play a character I am uncomfortable with, or Ness, a terrible matchup.

In any case, I feel like a solution to stopping Brawl hate would be teaching people (especially Melee players) about grab -> releases, glide tosses, the fact that Diddy AND the Ice Climbers have infinites, and whatever else you guys have figured out. Sometimes, it takes more than just saying "look at smashboards" because people would much rather just hate on a game because it is easy than go study a game that they may not want to play since Melee is "better".

Do not forget that many people that play Melee DO respect Brawl as a game and as a community. There have been a few Meleeitonme episodes that focused on what the Brawl community could do to get to MLG or get where they want to as a community. Personally, I feel like trying to get Melee to Brawl tournaments and working to get Brawl at Melee tournaments could build the hype of both games and bring many local communities closer and potentially make them bigger. Don't think of it as a time to show up the other game, but more like showcasing your own. Take a bit of knowledge from the Melee community: make it known that you WANT to be somewhere and are willing to bring setups, put time into finding space, and be persistent without being annoying. I know I will welcome Brawl at tournaments that I host (once I get to that point...I need to find a venue), but I will not necessarily post it because I am not a part of the local Brawl community.

As far as playing Brawl goes, I think I will end up playing Olimar. I tried picking up the game once before, but I decided to dedicate so much time to Melee because my finger speed was quite low.
 

skcye

Smash Rookie
Joined
Jun 22, 2014
Messages
8
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Brawl removed most of the technical mechanics of melee, and drastically slowed down their game making it easier to play. Melee is a better competitive game, it's honestly that simple. That doesn't necessarily make brawl a worse game, just worse for very high level competitive players.
 

skcye

Smash Rookie
Joined
Jun 22, 2014
Messages
8
Location
Arkansas
I don't understand this if it is 'easier to play' why are there still a contingent of top level players who tend to consistently place?
Because the game still takes skill, it's a fighting game and still requires a lot of the basic mechanics it takes to be good at a fighting game such as mindgames, and spacing. No one said Brawl is some random throw the dice game, it's just not on the same level as Melee. To just pull off the mechanics players like Mango, PP, and M2K pull off in Melee takes years to master. I don't mean to play like them, that's a whole other animal, I mean to just pull off the advanced mechanics of the game. Brawl, on the other hands, doesn't tote these advanced mechanics, the actual technical skill it takes doesn't take long to master at all.
 
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DownWitDaWaveDash

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I only got to play brawl for the first time in Jan 2013. I hated it before I even played it, due to me accepting what haters said about how bad it was. I enjoyed myself for 3 matches in a row having normal fun, not winning, not losing , but being able to do things based on my Melee knowledge. Then it happened. I started tripping. I didn't trip my whole first 3 matches. I was plauged with tripping for the rest of the day. Tripping into Ike's Smash attacks/Samus Charge shots kind off lowered my love of the game. I couldn't figure out what I was doing wrong.

Even now I get really hype to play Brawl, then I remember that tripping is a thing.

We had a Brawl Tournament at my school which I won. It took me 4 months to learn the game, and become "high level" in it. I didn't lose a single match. I decided to try out the tourney thing and go to another Brawl tournament.

I lost to a Meta-Knight. He used B-Special, Up-B, and Downsmash. Only those moves. He didnt approach after the first damage that he gave me. I also tripped into a downsmash after i power shielded a nado. And he was an exceptional pro at using tornado properly. I looked into the depth of my soul that whole match and thought "How is this working? Why can't i shield it all? He's only using one move!". I lost the match, and sort of lost that drive for brawl.

I tolerate brawl, but sometimes my salt gets in the way and I say something to try and discourage another player from it.

:/

I do not like competition that is based on luck. Cause I've got ****ty luck.
 
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infiniteV115

Smash Hero
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In the rain.
Most people who hate on Brawl as if it's a bad game don't know what they're talking about.

The reasons Brawl's scene has been slowing down recently are
  1. The self-fulfilling prophecy brought about by people saying "Brawl is going to die" or "Brawl is dead"
  2. Smash 4 being released soon, in combination with #1.
  3. Melee's recent revitalization in combination with the Melee scene's disapproval of Brawl
  4. Low-level Melee is more fun (for both playing and watching) than low-level Brawl. In Melee, a scrub playing against a better player will just get styled on and lose, and he'll feel like he's being completely outplayed. The same can happen in Brawl with some characters, but against a decent number of characters the low-level player will get punished by the same things over and over again and then they get the idea that this is what the game is like at all skill levels; repetitive, unbeatable spam that takes no skill. In Melee you get styled on by Fox, 0-deathed by Marth/Falco, combo'd into a knee, Ken combo'd, etc.; those are the most efficient ways to kill scrubs in Melee because getting the first hit is easy against a scrub, and the combination of scrubby combo DI + Melee's hitstun make it all possible. In Brawl you get nado spammed (eg the post above), CG'd by DDD/ICs/other chars in some MUs, flowcharted by Oli, CGd + camped by Falco, etc. Hell even fighting against Samus is probably hell if you're a scrub. It won't happen with all characters; Marth, ZSS, Lucario, Snake, Wario, most non top/high tier characters, and (depending on playstyle) MK, Falco, Pikachu and Diddy are not at all boring to fight. The problem is that it can happen, and it only needs to happen once to discourage newcomers. Thus, points #3 and #4 together mean that low-level Brawl players will stop playing Brawl and move to Melee (lowered low-player retention for Brawl), and now people are less inclined to go to a first Brawl tournament; instead they'll make their first smash tournament a Melee one (or PM cause some people think of it as Melee 2.0 since it uses the same engine as Melee for the most part)
  5. Low-level Melee players have less reason to give up than low-level Brawl players. In Melee, most low-level players that are striving to improve have much worse tech skill than the top level players. Melee's a tech-skill intensive game that requires you to practice often so your tech skill doesn't get rusty; if you want to win, your fingers have to be on point AND you have to have good decision-making skills. Everyone knows tech skill is really important in Melee. Thus, if low-level players go to a tournament and place poorly, they're gonna ask themselves why they performed poorly and the first answer they come up with (even if it's not the right one, cause it usually isn't) is that they just need to hit the training mode more often. Since Brawl isn't as dependent on tech skill, that's not gonna happen. And since low-level players (in either game) don't usually understand that they just have ****ty decision-making skills (the ones that do tend to make the most progress in terms of improving), a low-level Brawl player won't know what to do to improve, and so they'll give up.
 
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Frenzy

Smash Apprentice
Joined
Jun 25, 2014
Messages
87
They are stuck in the past? Melee is great and all but I'd take PM or Brawl any day. Probably going to play nothing but Smash 4 after it comes out.

And I watch competitive Melee and there isn't a ton of wave dashing. Sometimes I'll watch a whole match and no one uses it. Really over-rated.
 
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pidgezero_one

((((((((((( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) gotta go fast!
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the only way that melee players are stuck in the past is when people who started playing like last year try to act like they were affected as melee players by brawl's release in 2008. just cause you watched the documentary doesn't mean you were part of it

melee is as livin as ever and i dont see it as outdated but damn some people are silly
 

skwaag5233

Smash Cadet
Joined
Mar 17, 2014
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Wall of text inc. TLDR at the bottom.

I'm gonna further tap into my nerdiness and relate this to changes that happened during my high school marching band.

When I first started in my marching band as a freshman my band director had the mentality of only the best should march. There were significant numbers of alternates and it was very hard to march in as an alternate. I was lucky however, as one of the marchers got caught smoking/selling weed (don't remember which but that's not important) and I got his spot becaues they thought i'd be a hard worker. The marching style back then was very technical. You had to lean your body slightly forward but still keep it straight the entire show, your arms had to be in a triangle like shape and our horns were pointed 10 degrees above the horizon. legs were to be straight but not locked. Forward marching you were to point your toes as high up as possible and backwards marching was all on your tippy toes and when you stopped any movement, you pointed your toe to touch the ground and then brought your next foot in and plopped down. The purpose of all this was to make a form that looked fierce while also maintaining physical stability during marching so that we would actually be able to play and sound decent. Thanks to being able to march my freshman year, I became a very good marcher and was known as a good marcher all 4 years of me being in band. I would even say that before we changed our marching style, I could be considered the best marcher in the band.

We got a new band director my sophomore year and he started making a lot of administrative but only a few performance changes, the only difference really being we had less freedom to do what we wanted in parades (before it was basically ad lib) and we had to play more in football games. Junior year was basically an extension of what happened senior year. However, the summer of our senior year my band director decided to make marching band a lot easier. You no longer had to lean forward, assistant directors and section leaders were told to be less leniant on arm positions and horns were pointed straight, and instead of having to march on our tippy toes for backwards marching we got to roll them back to make it easier. I hated this. I hated it because I felt it took all the difficulty away from being a marcher. Marching to me was mastery of the physical finesse of marching as well as the musical talent needed to play well. I was good at this and I prided myself on being a good marcher and when I had to march along what I considered subpar marchers with sloppy forms. I also had a hard time adjusting because I had the old style of marching molded in to me. I can't count the number of times I was told my form was off because my toes were too high or I was giving "forward presence" when I shouldn't have.

I think I experienced what a lot of melee players experienced. They all liked the fast and technical gameplay and because they got good at it - especially the pros - they scorned brawl for taking away those things, that it was just a casual "everyone wins" kinda game, much how I thought of the new easier marching style as just an overly inclusive sloppy style.

But also like the melee players, I couldn't really connect the new styles to a larger context. Did the new marching style mean that being a good marcher technically didn't actually mean that much? Yeah, at least for me it did. But does that really matter to say, an audience? Are they gonna notice that the marcher's toes aren't pointing to the ****ing moon or that our horns aren't angled torward their faces? No, they're gonna see a bunch of people running around making shapes on a football field and playing music while doing it. After all it eases the physical burdens of marching and allows more people who maybe weren't good at marching could still march and contribute musically, just like competitive Brawl allows players to focus mostly on mind-games. However, any DCI fan (DCI being the closest thing to professional marchers we have) will be able to tell you that The Cadets step off with the right foot, Cavaliers still do kick-step, and a bunch of other technical jargon that tbh I'm not too familiar with but they could probably tell you.

Likewise, casual gamers (i.e. the main audience) aren't going to see wavedashes or l-cancelling or DI or dash dancing, they're going to see their favorite nintendo characters beat each other up with whacky stages and weird items.That's what smash is to them. Not crazy edge games by M2K or spaced bairs by Hbox.

TL;DR

My old marching band style was about mastering physical finesse along with musicality. When my band director implemented the new style taking away physical finesse, I hated it. I hated it because it took away something I enjoyed, something I was good at, and something that I felt seperated decent marchers from superior marchers. Brawl was the same way where it took away many of the fluid mechanics of melee and players hated it because it took away something many of them prided themselves on. However, these new forms did allow more people to play because they played less emphasis on the dexterity that was required of that activity. Some people thought this was a bad thing, but ultimately I think it's a good thing.
 

Celestis

Smash Ace
Joined
Feb 19, 2012
Messages
513
I don't understand this if it is 'easier to play' why are there still a contingent of top level players who tend to consistently place?
Brawl is easier to play, its how it was designed. But people can still be better it then others. So that is a given.

I went so a Smash tournament local to me for Melee, and I don't ever play Brawl. But Brawl was there as well in small amounts. I, a person who never plays the game, sat down and played against a player who plays the game competitively on a regular basis and beat him. I am not trying to brag about anything, I am just saying it is indeed much easier to just pick up and play. and do well even.

And you know what, Brawl is a good game for that. Its perfect for anyone to play.
 

Baby_Sneak

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Not trying to sound like a troll, it anything of the sort, just trying to help, honest on my heart. Play balanced brawl and make that a standard.Seriously.

Balanced brawl is brawl w/o the bullcrap. I think I could be healthy for the brawl community as balanced brawl is a mod that "updates" brawl and isn't a standalone mod. You can play MK exactly how you did before . It's just that you'll struggle way more. You can play bowser the same way you did before. It'll just be WAY more rewarding. Same goes for all the low tiers and bottom tiers.

Of course ice climbers can't chain grab the same way there, but they can desync better though

Balanced brawl has fixed tripping, stalling, grab-release, and other quirky stuff (jab locks for ex). They really cleaned up the system and balancing.

Even if the production is done (thy could pick it up if this catches on), it's still in a good place. As in, really accessible to get and easy to install, plus the site is still up.

But that's it for my point. (Note that they also fix some states for competitive play also for a bonus.)
 
Joined
Aug 6, 2008
Messages
19,346
I forgot about one thing.

Melee is simply so smooth to play and to look at compared to Brawl. It is probably akin to trying to drive very quickly. At least for me. For anyone who has gone driving on the highway, then had to come from 60-70 down to 30 due to city limit there is a bit of an irritation associated with having to slow down. The very act of going quickly itself is enjoyable. Once I got the movement down with melee and was not making clunky movements the game was very enjoyable to simply play even without having anyone to fact. As in I could go into say training mode or VS (training mode true lol) and simply due stuff for say like 10 minutes.

The only character I feel I could do random stuff with in brawl without actually attacking anyone was Snake and have fun doing it for awhile. Doing DACUS and various grenades actions was entertaining.
 
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Thor

Smash Champion
Joined
Sep 26, 2013
Messages
2,009
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UIUC [school year]. MN [summer]
Kati said:
I was enjoying reading until this.
I will have to read the rest tomorrow.
If you look at how fast each of them dashes, it's about the same speed.

Fall speeds are different, but I'm pretty sure I stated that in my post anyway.
 

-LzR-

Smash Hero
Joined
Jan 1, 2009
Messages
7,649
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Finland
There are many reasons why I think Brawl will pretty soon die out after Smash4 comes out.

1. Meta Knight is broken as all **** and many players refuse to admit it even when it's obvious. New people won't be interested in an unfair game and current players will get tired of it and quit, for example me. Ice Climbers are also a part of it, while not broken. Instead they are just so lame and stupid they kill everything that makes the game interesting. It's sad but the character should be banned for being so lame. They would be balanced just fine if MK was banned because that would allow people to have more stages legal (not that they would anyways, people love to john how they lose because the stage is not a static Floor with 3 small platforms above it).

2. Project M is rising in popularity. New players to the scene are immediately told how Brawl is garbage and P:M is the new god tier game even when it's a fanmade mod that tries to be like Melee but is actually just much worse thanks to some design choices. Because of this many new people never even give Brawl a chance.

3. The other Smash games are better competitively. They offer a higher skillcap than Brawl. It's a stupid and common stereotype that Brawl is a game that requires little techskill and a lot of reads while Melee requires a lot of techskill and less reads. In fact Melee requires more of both than Brawl, and you have to do it faster. Melee is not some kind of a technical circlejerk game. It's a very deep game that gives you a ton of different options if your hands can keep up.

4. Smash4, obviously this will take all the new players that would play Brawl instead of P:M.

tl;dr Brawl is a bad game and I regret ever playing it competitively and it will die.
 

Shinryuenjin

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Jul 14, 2013
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Southwest Florida
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Shinryuenjin
Brawl just isn't a very stimulating game imo. I know that competitive Brawl players insist on discussing its "logic" and "spacing" based gameplay but at the end of the day, the game requires less effort to play and master at not only a technical level but in just about every other way possible. It's not a bad game to me necessarily, but at the same time I find myself scoffing at Brawl players that insist Brawl is a "more intelligent" game as if mindgames were absent or lesser from 64 and Melee, which is a ridiculous notion.

Just one character example: I play a lot of Falco in both Melee and Brawl, even main him in Brawl. Can't really say that its very stimulating to play him in Brawl. Your most effective strategies almost always involve chain-grabbing into a spike when possible. Your opponent in competitive play KNOWS you're going to go for it because of how consistently effective it can be(it is so easy yet the payoff is so high). If it wasn't for things like DACUS and the Gatling combo I'd have gotten bored with Brawl a lot sooner than I did. Even with Brawl's techs options still felt restricted and the game was too lenient on getting back on stage(A problem that even P:M shares).

And lets not forget: Captain Falcon was absolutely ruined in Brawl. A Brawl player can love the game all they want to no shame there, but can anyone really defend just how crappy some of the Brawl characters feel? I think even the most hardcore Brawl players have to admit that it sucks that Brawl seems to favor characters with gimmicks(Snake, Olimar, Diddy, Ice Climbers) than those without and that's not getting into Meta-Knight. Everyone knows about him I don't need to go there. It is true that with the exception of Armada's Peach and Isai's olden days Falcon there hasn't really been many players that place high that aren't using Fox, Falco, Marth, Shiek, Jigglypuff or some combination of the five.

To me, Brawl is just a very...restrictive game in terms of mechanics, speed, and overall freedom with your character. PM is pretty much the best thing ever to me just because it takes a lot of what was awesome about Brawl and Melee and puts them together, though the Melee influence is most definitely dominant.

Not always true - I saw this one Jigglypuff at our local beat a Zelda by timing her out. And it went to game 3 - they managed to hold the rest of the bracket up by like 3 sets doing this [plus coaching between each round, was almost 30 minutes]. And yes this was a Melee match. If that's not slow, then there's no way in hell Brawl is slow.

Fall speeds are slower, but that's it for actual movement speeds - Sonic is actually faster than the other characters in Melee, and Captain Falcon has about the same speed. It's really the hitstun coding error that makes Brawl less combo-heavy and therefore not rack up percents as quickly.
That lone local match doesn't really prove that Brawl isn't slow. I mean, in competitive Brawl timeouts always felt more common because campy playstyles were encouraged due to how the game just is. All that really means is that those players weren't very aggressive and were campy, and by the sound of it outright going for the timeout.

In Brawl, momentum doesn't carry into your jump from a run. It is more than just "fall speeds are slower". There are quite a few reasons why Sonic feels pretty different in PM from how he feels in Brawl.
 
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BRoomer
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Hi, I'm <3. I've been playing melee competitively for years and Brawl competitively for... years too. (During my time I've played with the best of the best in some of the strongest regions in the USA.

Since the beginning of the great debate I've always said comparing brawl to melee is like comparing chess to checkers. Brawl is focused on strategic trades. Characters with good defense is KING in brawl. Melee is about set ups and combos with big hard hitting punishes for good reads (that are flashy and fun to watch) Great offense is where power resides in melee.

Is checkers better than chess? Definitely!... for some people but not for everyone. And you know what? that's okay.

In melee spacing (at least for most of the higher characters) IS NOT a big thing, with the amount of shield stun and lack luster out of shield options no one can really answer drill to shine (or double shine) on shield. Or peach fair to slaps, or sheik fair to grab. Spacing and zoning is a huge part of the game that is true. but in Brawl oh... in brawl. it is so much more important. if you space and aerial wrong you get punished. But if you space that tilt right they aren't going to wave dash out of shield and punish you for it in brawl either. in melee I don't even see ground moves any more of most of the cast because of high risk they are.

Now don't get me wrong this isn't to say one is better than the other, I'm just pointing out differences. Brawl and melee BOTH have their own major flaws. Chain grabbing... I've never thought it was a good mechanic for any fighting game, both games have it to the point where its ridiculous. watch any top level melee marth versus a spacie, or D3 versus DK or Bowser. That's not fun to watch , and its frustrating to have it done to you. Wobbling, Brawl ICs.

DA CHARACTERS
And then of course characters.
In melee fox is outrageous... outRAGEous. a frame one move that combos into itself AND just about everything else including your kill moves. Its safe on shield... like completely safe. oh... and you are invulnerable during it. does that not blow your mind? (fox and falco have always blown my mind) the BEST projectile in the game for forcing action which again has ZERO risk to use. Amazing ground and air speed (to the point where you can't realistically react to an approach) and some of the highest priority, fastest ending aerials in the game.

And of course MK
Transcendent hit boxes that beat every thing and clash with nothing with very low lag, Tornado (very very hard to punish). Multiple jumps. Amazing defensive options, Great recovery options. Great options.

And clearly while neither of these characters is some unbeatable God. Its definitely an uphill battle for any one going up against either of them.

TECH SKILLS YO!
Brawl has plenty of high tech junk that require near frame perfect precision. Dacus, B reversals, D-D-D-D-DOUBLE B REVERSALS! glide tossing, and the the plethora of character specific junk. It frustrates me when people say at a top level brawl lacks the technical depth of melee. You still push a bunch of buttons in both games.

Now granted I think you push more buttons more often in melee because you HAVE to l-cancel, you NEED to fast fall. gotta wave dash out of that shine! And that's all good and cool too, but it doesn't subtract from brawls depth any more than jumping multiple pieces in checkers dilutes the turn by turn play of chess.

I say all that to say this
WHY DO MELEE PLAYERS HATE BRAWL:

Because it is different... because it's chess not checkers. Thats really it. Everything else is grasping at straws, but to put it most simply Brawl didn't not live up to their expectations of a more Melee smash.
 

TOGOpuff

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First things first : I'm sorry it took me so long to come back here and say something. I've been really busy trying to organize a tournament and it's taking a good part of my life. Now, going to what matters.

It's fantastic that i come here after more brawl experience (a lot more) and i look upon meta knight as "not that big deal" anymore. And every time i get myself playing a meta knight with confidence that he's just another character i remember when i used to think he should be banned. It took me a while. A long while i might say but after a lot of data reading, spacing training and after long hours in the lab improving my game overall i find how wrong i was.
I really would like to thank everyone who replied and how you helped in this mind opener process where i was just not training hard enough to get better at match ups and was trying to say how overpowered a character was because i wasn't reading him well enough.

Of course brawl still have it's flaws. It was meant to. And yeah MK still feels broken when i play it but the idea of banning a character just for the enjoyment of the stream feels so wrong now that i really got into the game that i kind of feel bad for thinking that way in the past. Well, evolution i guess.

Stream hate will keep hapenning andi though we could look for brawl-only tourneys w/ streams.. possible ? Brawl won't keep up if we try to please a non-brawl community and i just realized that a few days ago so i think we should create our own entertainment.

The bad news though is that brawl is about to die in my country. Biggest tournaments already said they won't have brawl because there's no player base. The only place we can find brawl tournaments now are in some anime events, most players are casuals and aren't interested in making a competitive brawl scene (as far as i'm concerned). I will keep trying though. My efforts payed off when 2 events got in touch with me asking if i could provide brawl setups for a tourney. I will be sure to attend and invite other competitors to look for me at twitter and facebook trying to build some brawl scene.
 
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BRoomer
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For the record I don't think the melee community killed brawl... I think the brawl community killed itself. Brawl was a VERY popular game competitively, people like to shrug that off, but it was on MLG too. It had tournaments that rival the numbers we are seeing for melee now.

Brawl's community was split within itself. Half want MK banned, the other half didn't. Half wanted certian shages to remain legal, others didn't...

I think THAT is where the decline started... again its the case of unmet expectations. There were people certain leader of the community. fighting hard to keep MK playable. And when the community votes to ban out your main, the character you put years into and are getting results with would you brush it off and keep smiling? pick up another character and hope for the best? I don't think most people did...

And then on the reverse, the TOs that ignored the BBR's choice and ran tournaments with MK legal anyway. People who passionately argued for MK's ban, who fought hard and HAD all that work come to fruition. They convinced the majority they were right only to have people ignore them, and continue to be forced to play against this character that they COULD NOT beat. What do you think their response was.

The Brawl community grew up in a very different environment from melee, a different time.


I think melee's resurgence had very little to do with Brawl decline. But it wasn't brawl's game play the killed it. I was the splits within the community; the disconnect between the players.
 
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