What are your opinions on Project M?

[t3h Icy]

I've talked with a lot of Melee players (and some Brawl ones) on their opinions on Project M and its place in the future of the Smash community, and I'm interested in what more people think. Do you think Project M is the future of Smash, just a gimmick on par with low tier tournaments, the patch for our beloved game we've always dreamed, just another Brawl hack, etc, etc.

Also, do you guys feel that the addition and increasing popularity of Project M will split the community even further after Brawl's release, or will it unify everyone?

Basically, are you looking forward to Project M?

 

[The Star King]

yes yes yes yes yes

This could be the future of Smash. A game crafted and balanced by competitive players is the best thing a competitive community can ask for.

 

[The Good Doctor]

It seems to reward camping and highly defensive play too much for my liking. I play with my scrub friend pretty often and he is semi successful against pretty good melee players just by camping effectively.

 

[rawrimamonster]

Project M has possibilities, but I only see a future for it if its enforced as the main thing for brawl play, which is impractical because not everyone can or wants to mod their wii...and a lotta the brawl community likes their planky floaty crapfest.

 

[The Good Doctor]

Project M has possibilities, but I only see a future for it if its enforced as the main thing for brawl play, which is impractical because not everyone can or wants to mod their wii...and a lotta the brawl community likes their planky floaty crapfest.

You dont need to mod your wii FYI

 

[Mahie]

It seems to reward camping and highly defensive play too much for my liking. I play with my scrub friend pretty often and he is semi successful against pretty good melee players just by camping effectively.

And that wouldn't work in Melee?

I like the game, it's a refreshing change of pace. I don't know about it becoming stand-alone, to be honest, I think how good or bad the game is isn't even relevant when it comes to that, it'll depend on the community.

 

[The Good Doctor]

And that wouldn't work in Melee?

I like the game, it's a refreshing change of pace. I don't know about it becoming stand-alone, to be honest, I think how good or bad the game is isn't even relevant when it comes to that, it'll depend on the community.

Not to the extent it does in PM, especially with the characters he does it with. (Mario/Peach)

 

[Oskar]

Having spent a good number of hours with the game over the course of the last few weeks and even participating in a P:M tourney last weekend, my opinion is that it's basically a fun alternative to be played from time to time, but probably not the long awaited spiritual succesor to Melee or whatever that people are holding out for. It's great as a side event, but all in all I'd rather just play Melee most of the time, which still feels a lot smoother and more polished in a bunch of ways that I can't really articulate.

I'm also fairly sceptical about the character balance. Creating a cast of 40 or so characters and having them all be roughly balanced in terms of power isn't as easy as a lot of people seem to think. I'm pretty sure if it feels like every character is viable it's just because the metagame is basically non-existent at this point, and further scrutiny would reveal a bunch of relatively overpowered characters.

So yeah, a fun game and definitely a great undertaking by the developer team, but to herald Project: M as "the future of competitive smash" or whatever seems pretty premature at this point.

 

[Beat!]

Extremely fun game. I've liked it for a while, but this past weekend really opened my eyes for how awesome it is.

That being said, it has a LONG way to go before I'll even consider replacing Melee with it.

 

[KishPrime]

I love it in every way, shape, and form. Went to a tournament this weekend - it's like going to a Melee tournament in 2004 when everything surprises you. So much fun.

It's funny seeing the notes on camping - if anything I feel like a lot of the characters were given some fairly ridiculous options for mobility. Which is a good thing, given stage structure in Melee. I guess I'd have to see the heavy camping strats. Before this weekend, I'd pretty much only played my brother's Bowser.

It's never going to replace Melee, just because it'll never have the publicity of a retail release and because there's always the chance Nintendo shuts it down if it does get there. Plus, Nintendo's done selling Gamecube controllers, which is a nasty possible end none of us like to think about for Melee and PM. But should Melee/PM be run side-by-side at tournaments? Oh yes, now, forever, and always.

 

[Deleted member]

PM is very good. Not perfect, but I'd say they have like 98% of the right idea.

I agree that PM is significantly more defensive than melee is. Assuming that you're playing to win.

 

[Steelia]

It's way more fun than vBrawl, but the characters... other than Ganon, they don't feel quite the same as their SSBM counterparts, which is what I was expecting. They're adding in alot of their own elements, which is cool. But I was expecting even more of a replica of Melee?

I'd hope PM becomes the standard SSBB hack for people, but as for me I just enjoy myself some original SSBM a little~ bit more.

 

[Jockmaster]

I find the variety in project m absurdly refreshing. While it isn't perfectly balanced, there seem to be sooooo many more viable characters. More usable characters means a much more diverse, dynamic, and exciting meta.

Of course it won't replace melee, it's a mod that is trying to emulate it for christs sake. But I think it could be the future of smash (this depends on smash 4 obviously).

Everyone should remember, the demo we have now is only an appetizer. This ISN'T the actual project m. Many flaws being pointed out may (and probably will) be polished out.

 

[Fregadero]

I think its a ton of fun. It really gets the creative juices flowing, because its like approaching melee knowing the techs but not the characters. Exploring combo options and the like is SO much fun. Only reason I don't play it a ton is because I'm newish to competetive melee and P:M still isnt "finished" yet.

As far as it being the future of smash, I don't know. It needs to be more polished before we get near that point, and may face the same aging issues melee is facing w/ the gamecube and CRTs. I'm also in love with melee so...

 

[Shadow Huan]

i played bowser and fell in love with it. sure he gets shut down by campy characters on big stages (he should anyways) but bowser is viable. viable!

let's say you have someone who has never played melee but mains bowser in project M. if one of thier friends talked them into playing melee and they played melee bowser against... say, a good fox or falco, or marth, or falcon, or sheik... or puff... or peach... i wouldn't be surprised if they never played melee again.

 

[JPOBS]

My only question is this:
Once the full game is released and it is given a few months/a year of testing by competitive players trying to find the best ways to win, will the P:M team constantly be releasing update patches to fix "balance issues" ?

The answer to that question alone will decide whether I take P:M seriously. In a game where balance patches are available, it hurts the metagame (imo) because players will usually find advantageous tricks, and then the community will call for it to be patched, without even the chance to have the metagame develop and possibly balance on its on through the development of counter strats, and counter-counter strats.

Basically, I won't play P:M seriously if patches are going to be issued.

 

[Ripple]

I just want everyone to know that at this moment, me and a few others are working on a balance batch for actual melee.

no real information to give out yet, we're in alpha testing

 

[Blea Gelo]

it can or cannot be as good as melee. i don't know. i tried it, and i still melee is way better but, an advantage this game has is that it can be updated with the pace of time. this means, it can get to a point were it can be REALLY balance, and it's not a slow game or anything. it's just different, i don't know.. until now, melee wins for me, but im giving tiem to that game

 

[Youngling]

My only question is this:
Once the full game is released and it is given a few months/a year of testing by competitive players trying to find the best ways to win, will the P:M team constantly be releasing update patches to fix "balance issues" ?

The answer to that question alone will decide whether I take P:M seriously. In a game where balance patches are available, it hurts the metagame (imo) because players will usually find advantageous tricks, and then the community will call for it to be patched, without even the chance to have the metagame develop and possibly balance on its on through the development of counter strats, and counter-counter strats.

Basically, I won't play P:M seriously if patches are going to be issued.

agreed 100%

 

[Blea Gelo]

My only question is this:
Once the full game is released and it is given a few months/a year of testing by competitive players trying to find the best ways to win, will the P:M team constantly be releasing update patches to fix "balance issues" ?

The answer to that question alone will decide whether I take P:M seriously. In a game where balance patches are available, it hurts the metagame (imo) because players will usually find advantageous tricks, and then the community will call for it to be patched, without even the chance to have the metagame develop and possibly balance on its on through the development of counter strats, and counter-counter strats.

Basically, I won't play P:M seriously if patches are going to be issued.

i don't know man.. what im reading has no sense for me, and no insulting or anything, is just what i think. look at dota, dota 1 community survived everything since it first came out. and valve was updating the game like once a month. and it was actually pretty good, cause there was no broken sht.. they should do it until the game gets pretty balanced and then leave it that way.

 

[JPOBS]

i don't know man.. what im reading has no sense for me, and no insulting or anything, is just what i think. look at dota, dota 1 community survived everything since it first came out. and valve was updating the game like once a month. and it was actually pretty good, cause there was no broken sht.. they should do it until the game gets pretty balanced and then leave it that way.

I'm not saying that it can't work. Lots of games have patches and still be successful.

What I'm saying is though, its a very slippery slope. What motivation to players and innovators like M2k have to push the game to its limits, when anything they discover could be easily patched?

To take an example, look at metaknight in Brawl. M2k spent years perfecting and pushing his metagame to the point where he was considered "broken" and eventually banned. But, that banning process took years to come around and now they are going to unban him, because they weren't sure he was actually broken, and time was given for them to find counter-strats (such as olimar and diddy being developed to beat MK). That is HEALTHY for the metagame.

But imagine if in P:M, M2k pushes some character and finds a very strong strategy. All it takes is a little whining and a few hours of elbow grease in the lab and poof, the game gets "balanced" again. Why then would anyone bother trying to push the game if their strategies are just going to get fixed if they turn out to be "too good"

Now granted, constant balancing may be nice in the fact that, over a long enough time, the game will actually become very balanced. BUT, I just don't care to play a game where i have to relearn stuff every 3-4 months over the many years just to keep up.

This is my personal opinion. I'm going to play the game regardless, but i won't really take it seriously if theres lots of updates.

 

[t3h Icy]

The difference is that banning an entire character is a very extreme change. If vanilla Brawl was patchable and was done so for the interest of competitive players, they could make a few small changes such as making Tornado have only half of the multi-hits it does, nerf his Uair slightly, and something like he can't glide twice until landing on the ground (such as Melee Link's Zair). This is just a quick example and I have no idea if it would actually balance out, but the idea is that Meta-Knight would still play mostly the same and be balanced without the need of forcing 20% of Brawl players to learn a whole new character.

 

[Wizzrobe]

I love PM a lot and it is a great game. It can never replace Melee though because most of the Melee veterans are still better in Melee and thats why I mostly play it so I can play Brawl characters in a melee style.

 

[JPOBS]

The difference is that banning an entire character is a very extreme change. If vanilla Brawl was patchable and was done so for the interest of competitive players, they could make a few small changes such as making Tornado have only half of the multi-hits it does, nerf his Uair slightly, and something like he can't glide twice until landing on the ground (such as Melee Link's Zair). This is just a quick example and I have no idea if it would actually balance out, but the idea is that Meta-Knight would still play mostly the same and be balanced without the need of forcing 20% of Brawl players to learn a whole new character.

well that's my point. Because Vanilla brawl is standard, players were forced to deal with it. And then we saw the rise of many anti-mk specific strategies and characters.

But, with an attitude of "we will just patch it", good players esetianally have no motivation to push their character because whateer they come up with could just be patched/removed anyway. Likewise, there is no incentive for opponents to have to figure out how to beat a strategy because hell, just patch it if it has "too much range" or "too little lag".

 

[Massive]

Project M is pretty good. It still feels brawl-slow after a few matches though.

It's fun to play, not fun enough to drop time to get good at; especially since your character could be buffed/nerfed at any time before the "full release".

 

[KishPrime]

I'm glad other people think the same way as me on patches. I hate them with a passion.

 

[Bing]

As a player of both melee and Brawl competitively, a firmly stand behind P:M. I mean I do agree with what JPOBS said, and that if new patches are going to be constantly distributed to fix broken tactics, then that would get rather.. "Gay" but as the game itself, I LOVE it. I mean as a brawl player I had always wanted to main Lucario. But in Brawl, **** THAT. In P:M, Every character is usable at an equal and enjoyable experience. I mean I played against _Eternal for hours at STYC 3 with Vigilante's setup. I was using Lucario, my favourite character and facing his Bowser, one of Lucario's worst MU's and it wasnt even that bad.

However with this being said, I can't really say this is the future of smash, I mean because it requires a Wii, Brawl and the download, it makes the game itself a little less Tournament Viable. However its certainly do-able.

Btw JPOBS you've been using that same GIF in your signature for months now and it still makes me laugh every time lmfao.

 

[♡ⓛⓞⓥⓔ♡]

I prefer Melee because it's more polished and "feels" better to play. Also, I do dislike the Brawl graphics and sound effects (Melee bias).

That being said, P:M will keep on improving while Melee stays the same. The fact that they have succeeded to make the game so close to melee without even touching the source code is ridiculous to me.

I think P:M will surpass Melee eventually, due to the time / improvement - factor. If Brawl had been like P:M, I doubt so many would play Melee anymore.

 

[Get Low]

It seems to reward camping and highly defensive play too much for my liking. I play with my scrub friend pretty often and he is semi successful against pretty good melee players just by camping effectively.

Melee is the same way. Why do you think Apex 2012 grand finals turned out the way they did?

 

[Deleted member]

I also hate patches.

I finally decided on sheik for PM and then her downthrow was changed to the PAL version and I haven't taken the game seriously since.

So yeah I'm pretty much an active example.

 

[Jockmaster]

Yeah I really don't get the "P:M is slow and campy thing". It might be a little slower (maybe), but Smash inherently just lends itself to making camping easy a lot of the time. The very nature of the platforming portion of the game lends itself to that.

 

[Dees]

Its pretty fun, but its just doesnt FEEL as good as melee. I guess it feels slower. Also wavedashing OOS is annoying.

 

[Bl@ckChris]

if brawl was P:M, i probably would have played both, and still preferred melee, just like i do now. It's still a really good game though.

edit: i also don't own a wii, and don't really plan on getting one just to play P:M, and without the ability to practice consistently (unless PP has a wii next year and wants to play it) i wouldn't really end up taking it too seriously myself lol.

 

[phish-it]

All of the characters aren't even released yet, so patching is kind of inevitable. Once the 'final' release comes through though, (all characters playable), there may not even be a strong need for future balance patches. It's not like the game is only being tested by the small group of people developing it, we have a pretty big audience.

 

[foshio]

I love PM. I do not even play melee unless someone else wants to... and I main fox... (though i also play as ness, DDD and others)

 

[Revven]

Just wanted to come in here and clarify about patches.

A patch would only be introduced under the most extreme circumstances. The final release of the game would settle for a really, really good while more than likely. The chances of a patch after 6 months of the final release are pretty slim unless there's a huge problem with actually being able to play the game.

You can look at our first patch for Demo 2 for an example of that. There were some serious gamebreaking bugs with the demo we didn't get to iron out before putting it out there. Such as Wario's bite freezing the game when inputting the Bthrow on a certain frame or Falco's hurtbox not allowing Marth to tipper him. While yes there's some other changes in that patch, you wouldn't see such a large scale of little changes like that in a patch for the final release; because all of the gameplay elements would (hopefully) be 100% matched to Melee and/or fixed.

I think it's a little crazy to expect us to have matched everything to Melee in Demo 2.1. We're close, but not 100% there yet in many areas and we're well aware of them! It's why we didn't put anything out for a long time, because we're striving for perfection (at least as far as the gameplay goes, obviously, character balance can never really be perfect).

So, again, for TL;DRs: final release won't see patches for a long time unless there's stuff that makes the game unplayable in some instances. Obviously at some point, if the community wants it and if a character is deemed too overwhelming based on MUs and tournament data, then a patch would be made to adjust where necessary. But otherwise, I wouldn't worry about patches out the wazzoo, we know how those things go already.

Still don't have a completely 100% solidified plan for final release, but pretty much what I said about patching should be correct. Only when completely necessary.

It's pretty heartwarming to read some of these posts in this thread, by the way.

 

[Mokumo]

It's good.. It's still more brawl than melee to me. It will never replace ssbm but hopefully it will somehow replace brawl

 

[Cummings]

So, again, for TL;DRs: final release won't see patches for a long time unless there's stuff that makes the game unplayable in some instances. Obviously at some point, if the community wants it and if a character is deemed too overwhelming based on MUs and tournament data, then a patch would be made to adjust where necessary. But otherwise, I wouldn't worry about patches out the wazzoo, we know how those things go already.

^^^The reason I'm planning on buying a wii before final release to play this game. It's so nice to have the brain of a competitive player behind the reins now. Even if I will still enjoy melee much more (being that im rather new to the scene atm and Im still constantly learning), Ill play this game simply as a testament to the amazing things happening to make PM possible.
and of course, to spread the word!

also, Lucario's A+B moves remind me of soul calibur II back in the day. love it! really excited to see what players much better than me will do with his multi-dimensional moveset. Can't wait!

 

[Kal]

JPOB's posts on patches are pretty stellar. A healthy attempt at balancing a game through patches would mean waiting a sufficient amount of time after the discovery of a strategy before patching it. But most modern games don't take that route: too many people complain, so you either patch it or risk alienating the community. This would not be an issue if patching were not a possibility (which is why you don't see anyone lobbying for a Pichu buff), but because it's a possibility and an accepted standard, we see games deteriorate in depth quite frequently.

There are some exceptions, especially when developers really know what they're doing. But more often than not, the voice of the majority will overwhelm reason, and even the best developers with the highest integrity will heed their wallets and their egos.

 

[Deleted member]

Yeah I really don't get the "P:M is slow and campy thing". It might be a little slower (maybe), but Smash inherently just lends itself to making camping easy a lot of the time. The very nature of the platforming portion of the game lends itself to that.

it's a relative thing, since the game is compared to melee. it's faster than melee in some aspects. it's just a much more defensively oriented game. which is fine.