What if Melee had active updates like PM and Smash 3DS/WiiU?

[Marth Regalia]

Join me in a hypothetical that will never happen.

What if Nintendo actively released updates for Melee that nerfed/buffed specific characters or moves?

Personally, I'm glad that Nintendo isn't tampering with Melee because that means that my mains will never get any worse and at the end of each tournament I know that my combos will still work the next tournament.

If things got buffed/nerfed, what would you guys want to see happen to the game?

 

[AirFair]

Kirby becomes top tier after just about every other character gets nerfed.

 

[Spak]

If Nintendo had the ability to patch Melee, they would remove Wavedashing, JC Grabs, and a bunch of other stuff. They would remove everything that made it competitive, which is why I fear for the future of competitive Smash 4.

 

[SAUS]

Well first off, we'd probably be playing at least PAL.

I really don't like games with frequent updates because it takes away from the learning/improving mentality and gets people focusing on character balance.

My guess is that we wouldn't be playing melee right now if nintendo was actively trying to balance the game.

 

[gmBottles]

Kirby becomes top tier after just about every other character gets nerfed.

Finally, what I've been waiting for my whole life.

 

[Thor]

If Nintendo had the ability to patch Melee, they would remove Wavedashing, JC Grabs, and a bunch of other stuff. They would remove everything that made it competitive, which is why I fear for the future of competitive Smash 4.

They gave Ike a SH autocancel fair. And buffed Pikachu's Thunder. And fixed GnW bucket so Thunder doesn't full charge it. And Falco's lasers have less endlag.

I'm pretty sure if they were making the game anti-competitive/purely for casuals they wouldn't do that, since n00bs will whine louder than ever about Ike and Pikachu thunder spam being "too good" (the bucket thing they probably won't notice).

They probably would've drastically altered Melee, so I can see why you'd worry about Melee, but I honestly think Smash 4 is in fairly solid hands (future patches might disprove this, but I read the notes SWF has compiled so far and nearly all of it is positive).

 

[AirFair]

Yeah, its not so bad right now.

 

[Spak]

They gave Ike a SH autocancel fair. And buffed Pikachu's Thunder. And fixed GnW bucket so Thunder doesn't full charge it. And Falco's lasers have less endlag.

I'm pretty sure if they were making the game anti-competitive/purely for casuals they wouldn't do that, since n00bs will whine louder than ever about Ike and Pikachu thunder spam being "too good" (the bucket thing they probably won't notice).

They probably would've drastically altered Melee, so I can see why you'd worry about Melee, but I honestly think Smash 4 is in fairly solid hands (future patches might disprove this, but I read the notes SWF has compiled so far and nearly all of it is positive).

I'm not saying they are making it anti-competitive, I'm saying that if a glitch\manipulation is found in the game by the community, they would instantly patch that. If that happened with Melee, as SAUS pointed out, we would not be playing Melee today and personally, I wouldn't be on Smashboards right now because competitive smash would have never become big.

 

[AirFair]

True, I joined for the melee scene

 

[JayTheUnseen]

Yeah,Nintendo would make Melee...not Melee anymore.The PM devs we can look to for a balanced Smash with Melee movement.

 

[Marth Regalia]

You all bring up good points.
Just a hypothetical that I wanted to explore.

Smash 4's the first Nintendo-Made Smash with active altering and updates, and while I'm okay with it so far, there's always the possibility that my characters could get butchered with the next update, which worries me.

 

[JayTheUnseen]

You all bring up good points.
Just a hypothetical that I wanted to explore.

Smash 4's the first Nintendo-Made Smash with active altering and updates, and while I'm okay with it so far, there's always the possibility that my characters could get butchered with the next update, which worries me.

Yeah,if we find fun stuff not meant to exist,they'll take it out if it's too competitive.Although in Melee wavedashing was a glitch discovered in development which they chose to keep in,if they could have removed it later when they saw how competitive it made the game,they'd have removed it.It's too bad a similar thing can't really happen with Smash 4.

 

[Racuncai]

Melee has a balance pach and is called SD Remix, check it out.

 

[Stride]

They wouldn't necessarily end up removing competitive depth, but considering Nintendo's record with patching smash games I have very little faith in their ability to consistently make good decisions when it comes to patching. Smash 4's 1st balance patch already looks pretty worrying (and the lack of patch notes is beyond absurd).

Look at Melee (most changes happened in PAL): some top tiers received reasonable nerfs (Fox's up smash, Sheik's down throw), while some changes to the top tiers were more questionable (Falcon's late knee being made weaker). Also, things like the freeze glitch and Shadow Ball glitch were patched out, which I don't think anyone can argue against. But there were also many pointless/detrimental nerfs; Ganon's forward air was given much less knockback, and lots of characters had very small adjustments to their weight that barely did anything (and Marth having his weight reduced was actually an unintentional buff since it makes him fall over when shined by Fox). The low tiers that did get buffed are still unviable garbage, but glaring technical errors such as Game & Watch's L-cancelling and Roy's dash attack were left unchanged (which I would have expected to be fixed in one of the NTSC patches, especially considering that Ganon's nair frame data was fixed in 1.01; that was also a technical error).

At least Melee hasn't had any major techniques patched out; flame cancelling and the Link/Young Link boomerang cancels come to mind, though their impact wasn't too great simply because those were techniques specific to unviable characters anyway.

Melee would benefit from balance patches, but I wouldn't be comfortable with whoever handled the previous balance patches deciding on what they would be.

 

[Johnknight1]

Nintendo would likely lower the technical and strategic ceiling, take away gameplay options, nerf offense across the board, and remove all wavedashing and wavelanding.

They'd also likely fix frame rate issues (see: Mute City, Fountain of Dreams, Big Blue), fix glitches (the black hole, the Ganondorf-Ice Climbers rare Dreamland glitch, etc), and fix some dumb mechanics (3 of Kirby's grab throws having openings to escape from + 2 of them potentially KO'ing Kirby).

Honestly though I wouldn't mind a balance patch that just fixes up the bottom and low tier characters to be more viable, but given what the Smash 4 patches look like so far (I'd say slightly more negative than positive, although perhaps I am being pessimistic) and Sakurai's thoughts on us (a bunch of extremists who play the game the wrong way), competitive smash stuff would be removed so that way the game at the highest competitive level would look "more family friendly" and "easier" to "make it easier for anyone to win", per common Sakurai logic.

 

[9Blades]

It would probably become Smash 4 with less characters.

 

[rivers]

Probably wouldn't have wobbling anymore.

Or wavedashing.

Or the super wavedash.

Or the extended grapple

etc

 

[Young Rinku]

Nintendo would likely lower the technical and strategic ceiling, take away gameplay options, nerf offense across the board, and remove all wavedashing and wavelanding.

They'd also likely fix frame rate issues (see: Mute City, Fountain of Dreams, Big Blue), fix glitches (the black hole, the Ganondorf-Ice Climbers rare Dreamland glitch, etc), and fix some dumb mechanics (3 of Kirby's grab throws having openings to escape from + 2 of them potentially KO'ing Kirby).

Honestly though I wouldn't mind a balance patch that just fixes up the bottom and low tier characters to be more viable, but given what the Smash 4 patches look like so far (I'd say slightly more negative than positive, although perhaps I am being pessimistic) and Sakurai's thoughts on us (a bunch of extremists who play the game the wrong way), competitive smash stuff would be removed so that way the game at the highest competitive level would look "more family friendly" and "easier" to "make it easier for anyone to win", per common Sakurai logic.

Ganondorf-Ice Climbers rare Dreamland glitch?

 

[psychoripper]

I'd hate to have a game thats been unchanged for over ten years to suddenly get modified. That would be very odd feeling

 

[Doser]

Honestly the 20XX pack is very close to what I'd consider an ideal update to melee.

I'd be ok with Nintendo removing the Freeze glitch and Wobbling, but that's about it.

 

[Clint Jaguar]

Melee wouldn't be the greatest competitive game of all time.

 

[Quillion]

Melee has a balance pach and is called SD Remix, check it out.

This guy knows.

 

[vynleren]

I wouldn't play Melee if it had balance patches, same reason I don't play P:M.

 

[Quillion]

I wouldn't play Melee if it had balance patches, same reason I don't play P:M.

You like it when a select few characters dominate while the rest go unused? Okay.