Don't you think the game would be silly if everyone was at the level of top tiers though? Especially if they're not as technical and execution heavy as spacies? Why bother busting my *** with fox if someone else gets the job done easier?
And if you don't want everyone else at the same level as spacies, what's the point of balancing the game when spacies remain the ultimate choice?
I'm not specifically justifying any specific nerfs per say, but any well balanced game can't simply bring lower tiered characters up, but higher tiered characters down. Even if there are no broken characters.
As someone who's going into game development, I'm sure you're aware of this.
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Great point here and something I talked about in a huge post in the Forced Design thread: nobody likes to see nerfs because people as a whole focus tremendously on the bad and not the good. You could tell somebody that their character will get an extra damn jump but then lose damage on Ftilt or something, and people will complain endlessly about how Ftilt sucks now and only like 1-2 posts will be about how they got a new friggen jump lol. Think about how many characters actually received buffs in 2.6: how often do you hear of them and not the things that got nerfed?
But yes, how do the "melee legends" suppose everyone else get buffed? Suppose everybody gets tweaked like Mario: just better moves in general to the point that they are just as effective as Fox. Now hold on, Mario is much easier to play consistently than Fox, no? If he is just as good and easier to play/master than Fox... why play Fox?
Same works in reverse: Jigglypuff was a top tier in Melee. Left unchanged, other buffed characters are shown to stomp on her thanks to not being exposed to the normal melee matchups that she was allowed to wreck in (for example, Toon Link is Young Link++ and therefor acts as a check, among other characters). So left unchanged, she may actually be
worse than in Melee by a significant margin because she was only good in the context of everyone else sucking + being good vs the melee top tiers.
So, what is the PMBR to do? Making everybody as good as Fox either means Fox becomes suddenly
less attractive / WORSE because other characters get more bang for their buck so to speak, getting away with Fox's stuff without the mastery / high risk needed. Alternatively, we give them all the options ever like Fox has (fun fact: Fox is so good not only because he has some stand-out Vertical kill potential, but because he has an option/answer for anything you throw at him. Rarely is a Fox in a neutral situation where he's like "welp, ****..." no, Fox always has an answer to whatever you throw at him making forcing a decision his way in the form of goofy combos / Spacie specific CG's almost needed to combat it), which makes everybody stale as there would be less playstyle variety. Everybody would either be a spacie variant, sheik variant, marth variant or possibly puff/falcon variant, and with a cast of 40: emulating just 3-5 playstyles just feels wrong.
So, what is the answer here?
The solution is that characters change in order for the game as a whole to be healthy. If Jigglypuff is underperforming due to new characters / new relevant matchups, she would probably be the one changed instead of the other characters simply due to her prior "status". If Fox's design is shown to be too much but mechanically and in practice, he may receive changes rather than changing EVERYONE ELSE which would take up to 39x the effort for a result that ultimately hurts Fox anyways. Top tier status is relative and shouldn't be a benchmark for such a new playing field: just look at how Marth's usage and overall effectiveness (according to the community) has dropped from his pedestal in Melee. Sure he is just as good, but the game around him changed to allow people to be just as good if not slightly better. If he isn't considered top tier in this new environment, should he be exempt from changes since he was in another?
The way I see it, this is a new experience within a familiar setting where is something as huge as new matchups upset you, maybe the game isn't for you as the whole premise is to make a cast of 40 viable instead of just 8-10. If something small is in the way of you having fun? The PMBR are probably already on the case or unfortunately it will have to be something to get used to due to some limitation, and could even end up being a fun new way to think about the game (you can't edgehog tethers, but you can force them to jump!). For the people that only care about the 8-10 top tiers in melee, that is cool if you love them and such but what about the hundreds upon hundreds more that want to play the other 16-18, or better yet 32-34? Focusing on the melee tops so much (both in character and legends) has merit, but it seems like a mistep for a game that is supposed to encompass all the players who wanted to take any character to the top of their game, not just the select few using the select few.
Slightly more on topic, the one legend who I've met/played with I'd have to guess likes the game as he plays it each time it's set up at Umass and enjoys using new characters. He has a killer Ike and apparently is interested in Lucario, but his one complaint is that he feels that moves could be a little more powerful.
