First let me just say I never really played any SB game before Brawl. Tried melee but my wife kicked my *** repeatedly. Hated the control scheme. Love the wii-mote. ne way
That said, I have really only been playing Online Basic Brawl. Been doing that everyday average of 4-10 hours a day since the game launched.
OK! So, here's what I've noticed, and what annoys me and also I guess I need some clarification/have some comments after reading the preceding 11 pages of posts.
1.) Can't customize Brawl settings: really! Ok, so when I choose to turn off items and eliminate half the stages, it accepts those changes, and indeed many of the brawls that come end up just as I specified, are you saying that my choices are not being allowed, that instead the "host" or whatever has seen my choices and is being kind enough to honor it for me???? In other words I've had plenty of no-items matches, etc so saying "no control at all" is an either an exaggeration or I'm missing something.
2.) The so-called Taunt Party. heh, ok, well yeah the first time I ran into that I had NO idea what was going on just thought they were all wacky, and I definitely got destroyed by any of the 3 others that I challenged. Now, tho, well honestly I'm not that interested in them, they're kinda lame. It's fun once maybe twice but being a daily online basic brawler, gosh it's so old. And now that I'm fairly skilled I think I will call myself the Taunt Party Crasher. In fact just last night I successfully ran some Taunters out of the brawl, and did it with Ike just for good measure.
3.) Charging up smashes especially with Ike so to get an easy knockout. Uh, this isn't really SPAM IMO. This is more, what brawl is about. When you're opponents are 0-20% or so you throw more tilts and jump attacks than smashes. When they're between 20 and 60% start with the charged smashes, the higher they are in dmg the longer they float, so therefore the longer you charge your smash, and you're even rewarded for it as when it hits it does that much more dmg, and with Ike, well obviously that = a KO. I don't find this annoying, I find it an essential part of a good brawl strategy.
4.) B-spamming. Ok ok, yeah, that's annoying. I remember a few months ago I had one person in the match do nothing but up-B, just picked random characters one after another and each match that's all they did. Ok, so it was lame. But in defense of Kirby who is my true Main, his d-B is especially effective towards the 80-100% time in a brawl, and in general I've noticed that B-moves work best during this phase in a match. So again, strategy, and rightly so if it's not abused. If it is, you shouldn't find it annoying. Consider it an easy victory, for someone doing nothing but B moves the whole match should by all rights be easy to KO.
5.) Lag. haha, yeah, I have to admit, at first I expected it to be super laggy. This is my first game I play online (that includes PC). And actually it wasn't laggy at all. It wasn't until some time later that the matches got more and more lag-prone. Research on the net has suggested it's due to all the hacked games out there. Nintendo can't do anything about it. Well, ok. I've been made to look like a jerk as someone said earlier. I dabbled with SSBBPlayers.com and fighting a Pit user who liked to close the distance w/B. Curse those arrows! Anyhoo, after about 10 seconds of that, the game was immediately dropped making me look like a quitter. Another same-day match against someone else, I was hounding them with grabs. I am a grabber, it's key in all fighting games, SB no exception. But sure enough after landing about 3 in a row, dropped. As if my Wii's been programmed to drop a match if any button mashing, excessive grabbing, etc = auto-drop. Possibly? Eh, I dunno, makes me sound paranoid, but if you play this thing as much as me you start to see patterns emerge, and this is definitely one of them.
6.) "hosts" ... if you've ever gotten as many disconnects as me, you've noticed that sometimes, it says "... or you've been REMOVED FROM THE FRIENDS PLAYER'S ROSTER..." huh? What roster? I didn't add any brawl codes. Oooohhhh, so. That's how online basic brawl works. You log in, someone hosts the match, by adding your BC to their player roster and you brawl. I'd have figured this was automated, but it can't be. There's too many coincidences going on. Fighting 3 people, and winning over an over, then they all suddenly dissappear, and are replaced by 3 sonics, who all mash on "you're too slow!" the whole match? I get this whenever I use a customer controller setup, with smash keys assigned. As if to say, that brawling with smash keys = you're not as skilled as someone who has default wii-mote setup which of course has no smash keys enabled. In fact, I can't even get a straight match w/o leaving my smash keys turned off. The moment I turn them on, I get nerfed by taunters who immediately start the brawl if nothing but smash key button mashing, usually a GD or Fox. So yeah, I have find it annoying that the brawl with anyone feature is setup in such a way that my "host" is able to see who I'm using before the brawl begins. (wait, what?) Yeah, seriously in a series of matches, I'll go and pick any number of characters, and each time, my 3 opponents are always somehow related. If I pick TL, then I get a zelda/gd/link combo. Then I change to Kirby, and boom MK and DDD show up. Change to rob, ha! 3 other robs show up. ???? C'mon now! Also without fail these days when I log in, it's always 2 oponents that seem to "know" each other, and then an open 4th slot that gets filled seemingly by another real user like myself. The two "in on it" will double it, do things like the zelda/link or marth/peach (god they're tough) fox/falco, etc etc. It is annoying when I think about it. Better to have 3 random people none associated with nintendo, or whoever it is that's running the NWC for brawl.
There's more but I think I've exceeded anyones patience with this long winded post.
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