What Would Get You Guys Interested in Project M?

[Raccoon Chuck]

As many of you know, Project M is a Brawl Mod meant to capture the fast, spontaneous, and yet surprisingly technical gameplay of Super Smash Bros. Melee. Although our community is relatively large for a mod, I always have wanted to see the more of you guys join the Project M following. So, I want to hear everything that would make this the perfect sideline Smash for you, the Melee vets. Just remember, the goal is not to make a 1:1 clone of Melee.
NOTE: I'm not a Dev., just a big fan that would love even more folks to join the fray.

 

[pokemongeof]

To tell you the truth, many melee smashers are P:M players

but make luigi feel naturally slippery

 

[Jagoffian]

Samus.

10char

 

[CyberZixx]

I like and enjoy project M. It in fact got me over here to the melee side of things. Was a good transition from brawl to melee.

 

[iRobinhoood]

Samus with missiles that don't suck.

 

[_wzrd]

it'd be nice if fox felt better, he feels really sticky or something. like he's covered in soda.

on the real though, I like this game, it's really good.

i just like melee better & given a choice between the two, I'd choose melee any time!

 

[darkatma]

Make interactions in Project M as deep and meaningful as interactions in melee. In melee, every back and forth struggle in high level play means something. Short hops have more depth in timing, there are more mechanical mixups rather than built in ones, and intricacies in playstyle learned over the years can be manifest in an unchanging, unpatched, yet balanced game(At least for the top 6-8 characters). In P:M, giant hitboxes and ridiculous priority on characters, momentum shifting moves that invalidate dash dance and wavedash for half the cast, and easy homing attacks prevail. When did it get so easy to abuse a character and be considered good? Just ask yourself how many PMBR members are also winning tournaments, and you can easily see that they're creating movesets that cater to their own specific skills, rather than letting the game decide what skill means.

The only real way to fix P:M is to have developers that understand competitive play but don't compete.

Edit: I enjoy playing P:M but it's no Melee. 1000x better than vBrawl, 1/2 as good as Melee.

 

[Beat!]

I like P:M a lot, so I suppose this question isn't really meant for me.

That being said, one thing I've wished for since the first time I played it is that they would nerf recoveries overall. The complexity of Melee's edge game isn't really there, because too many characters have very good recoveries.

It's not awful or anything (we're not talking vBrawl-level edge game here), but I do find it less intriguing.

 

[Jim Morrison]

Nothing, and I definitely don't want to see it pushing away Melee tournaments in place of Project M. It's fun as a casual side-game, but don't lose out on a Melee tourney or an event for it.

And if Bowser got removed, I might find it more interesting.

 

[Strong Badam]

^epitomizes what is wrong with the melee community.
instead of playing melee because it's currently the best game out there (the reason I played it competitively for 5 years after its terrible excuse for a sequel came out and accomplished more with an unviable character than 90% of the "bcuz melee" crowd ever will with characters that summon blue hexagons and infinite red lines to fight for them), let's play it because it's melee. cool stuff.

Make interactions in Project M as deep and meaningful as interactions in melee. In melee, every back and forth struggle in high level play means something. Short hops have more depth in timing, there are more mechanical mixups rather than built in ones, and intricacies in playstyle learned over the years can be manifest in an unchanging, unpatched, yet balanced game(At least for the top 6-8 characters). In P:M, giant hitboxes and ridiculous priority on characters, momentum shifting moves that invalidate dash dance and wavedash for half the cast, and easy homing attacks prevail. When did it get so easy to abuse a character and be considered good? Just ask yourself how many PMBR members are also winning tournaments, and you can easily see that they're creating movesets that cater to their own specific skills, rather than letting the game decide what skill means.

The only real way to fix P:M is to have developers that understand competitive play but don't compete.

Edit: I enjoy playing P:M but it's no Melee. 1000x better than vBrawl, 1/2 as good as Melee.

i dunno, if i entered a tournament in a new game with my melee top tier (dunno why i'm expecting my character to be unchanged in a sequel, but hey it happened), steamrolled through every player without learning anything new up until i lost to a player in three straight games using a worse character than mine because he actually puts effort into the game that tests new and interesting skillsets that i have put none into learning, i'd probably start making posts like that one too instead of actually learning the match-ups, so i understand where you're coming from. but you're wrong. yeah, the game has its problems, that's sort of implied by the "demo" part. the point is the problems that exist will eventually be resolved, and pointing out things that don't actually affect you because no one even mains the character in this region as reasons to not like the game is a bit counterproductive.

i'm also not sure what you mean by how shorthops have more "depth" in timing. i don't think you're using the term "depth" correctly. the timing is easier than in melee, which we intend to fix eventually, but there's not actually a loss of depth because of it.

the last bit of your post is incredibly insulting and i think you need to take a look at a mirror. for the most part when we start doing unusually well we nerf our characters, not the other way around. but it really isn't our fault that we're talented at super smash bros. you and many others like you are the ones requesting changes be made to the game so that you can perform better in tournament under the guise of "a more melee-like skillset being tested," when more often than not you haven't even put effort into learning new match-ups and making use of new universal mechanics.
fwiw i would personally quit the PMBR if staying would mean I wouldn't be able to compete in the greatest competitive smash game of all time.

 

[Jim Morrison]

^epitomizes what is wrong with the melee community.
instead of playing melee because it's currently the best game out there (the reason I played it competitively for 5 years after its terrible excuse for a sequel came out and accomplished more with an unviable character than 90% of the "bcuz melee" crowd ever will with characters that summon blue hexagons and infinite red lines to fight for them), let's play it because it's melee. cool stuff.

Ey

Don't put words in my mouth.

 

[Massive]

It's not really fair to make any snap game balance judgements about project M since it's still in demo, I'm pretty sure not even the team realistically knows when the final version will be completed.

Unfortunately, I don't really think it will ever get the steam melee has/had mostly because the very minor entry barrier exists and the game is relatively unknown to the world outside our scene.

I do doubt there will be any substantial mechanical changes made to the game since the focus of the team seems to be more releasing characters than implementing some of the minutia of melee (correct me if I'm wrong, please). I'm willing to wager that the invincible grab-frames, funky ledge mechanics, and flowchart KO combos are probably there to stay.

All that being said, I like project M quite a bit. I get frustrated almost every time I play it (free hitstun > KO combos everywhere), but I still like it.

 

[Divinokage]

For me, certain characters have questionable physics and that kinda made me not want to play it anymore. =/

 

[KrIsP!]

I consider pm something good as a side tourney, not something I'd give up melee for.
Personally jiggly puff feels odd and I dislike playing her. If I had to put my finger on why it wasn't picked up completely is because it is a mod. That just carries over a certain stigma I suppose but it being a player made mod brings along a few things.

Trying to make everyone broken in a good way just gives us a cluster **** of strategies. It's early but trying to move the metagame forward is hard when you have so many match ups and so many tricks to deal with. Constant patching means the moment someone starts advancing it, they get nerfed. a lot of people say its a game where you can't have one main but I don't think that adds to it. Instead of looking for a way to overcome an obstacle a lot of people opt to change characters and count on a new match up and using their opponents inexperience against them rather than outplaying them. I can name quite a few players who have a main and work to develop their metagame, hats off to them, especially wizzrobe but its definitely annoying to have little practice and discussion and yet constant random strategies and characters. I find a lot of people resort to camping when they're unfamiliar with something and it starts getting boring.

It's still a demo so you can't complain until they release the definitive version but with all this I don't care to put all my effort into pm, especially when the majority of the community is treats it as a side tournament.

 

[Bad Cupboard]

Project M has a lot of stuff that's easier than in Melee. The short hop timing, the easy RAR dashes to ledge, the easy RAR turnarounds in general, the better recoveries and ability to grab the ledge while backwards, and all the guaranteed flowchart combos just make the game less dynamic in my opinion.
That's not really the issue though. Due to it being a mod I don't really see it taking over Melee, and I would rather spend my time learning a game that I think is more relevant. It's also still in development and I don't want to learn things only to have them changed in a few months. If they get to the final release and don't add ANY updates after that then I'll be more inclined to play it.
Also, playing PM in tournaments means having to deal with a lot of annoying skins that for some reason people think are a good idea. Recolors are fine but anything that makes the character model different is obnoxious.


That said it's still HELLA fun and a good break from melee every once and a while.

 

[CyberZixx]

I will echo what some other people have said as to why I like Melee more. The offstage game is not interesting because of how good many characters can recover plus the way the ledges work. I still think the best designed characters are many of the melee top tiers and they are still most fun to play. The combo game of some of the new characters feels not as free form. Like the game is a bunch of Shieks.

 

[KrIsP!]

Ignore/delete

 

[Prince_Abu]

pm just feels different from melee

 

[Kadano]

Melee sound effects by default. I can’t stand all those stupid “HHUUUYYYYYAAAAAAAA” shouts.

Also, what darkatma and Kage wrote. Especially Snake I can’t stand at all.
I don’t agree with darkatma’s compete-sentence though. PMBRs shouldn’t give the character they are working on unfair advantages, but doing so doesn’t necessarily imply they have the intention of using this to their own benefits.

 

[Sedda]

For me it has nothing to do with the differences/similarities from Melee.

I've been watching competitive smash for 2 and a half years, and Project M is what pushed me into wanting to play Smash.

My problem with it is actually the fact that it's too closely related to Melee while attempting to fix balance issues and such things, which is absolutely fine. However, that's kinda the only thing that it is. Yes, there's a lot of creativity; yes you guys have brought in new things to the table, but it still feels like there are only three games to choose from in Smash, with Melee and PM taking up the same kind of spot and role.

There's really nothing wrong with using Melee as a blueprint, but I ended up gravitating towards SSB64 because it's the one that really does feel different from the rest in so many ways, plus the community is a lot smaller, usually friendlier.

 

[Double Helix]

My thoughts on PM? I love the idea of balancing the cast, but I also feel like tier lists will happen regardless of how hard any developers try as long as there are different characters. I am a Ness main in Melee (my bad guys), but I cannot double jump cancel in PM. The DJC is awkward and I can only do it sometimes. That said, I can do Fox/Falco stuff far more easily than in Melee (like Fox's nairplane; so hard for me in Melee). As others have said, it is only a demo, but I think that superarmor (or whatever the lack of flinching frames is in this) is a cop-out to making the characters better. It does feel a little bit clunky, but I am sure that will be fixed later in time.

tl;dr:
Fix DJC. Find a way to improve characters without superarmor. Keep up the good work guys. Good ****.

 

[commonyoshi]

I haven't played it very much at all so I cant comment on the controls, but because I played brawl in college for like a year the graphics make me think of brawl. When I see fox in pm I think of brawl fox.

It'd be like if Samuel L Jackson decided to act the part of an Amish woman. It doesn't matter how well he tries to pull it off. All I see is Samuel L Jackson.

Change the character sprites some more and I'll stand playing it.

 

[Yung Mei]

my main issue with PM is that a lot of hitboxes don't make any sense (like Ness's fsmash hitting from what looks like 10 miles away) and half the cast having a "death throw" a la Ness's Bthrow

like every other person said, its pretty good, but it's no melee. I mostly play it because i have an easier time playing it than melee lmao

 

[Raccoon Chuck]

Good to know that we got quite a few of you. Personally, I think Fox's main problem outside of the technical stuff is his aerial mobility, that's where that "Sticky" feeling is coming from for me. He just feels like a kangaroo on a dog leash when I play him.

 

[Raccoon Chuck]

I love the idea of balancing the cast, but I also feel like tier lists will happen regardless of how hard any developers try as long as there are different characters.

Honestly, although I can't speak from a developer point of veiw, I think they know there WILL be a tier list, but they seem to be patching it in such a way that we don't have HUGE numbers between character performance. Counters are a big part of competitive Smash, and something I can't see leaving.

 

[phish-it]

Project M is a breath of fresh air but Melee's physics are just more polished overall. The ledges still feel Brawlish, with Sakurai reaching his hand out to grab you from far away. Combined with characters buffed recoveries (which isn't a bad thing) often times it feels like I need to my opponent back to the stages to kill them instead of edge guarding. But that is also partially due to the game being 'new' and unfamiliar in edge guarding some of the brawl characters.

I think the devs are headed in a good direction as far as balancing the cast goes, though no matter how perfect anything is there will always be critics and you can't please everyone. I guess the main gripe people have with Project M is that it attempts to be melee rather than actually be Melee or brand new game on it's own.

 

[MikeHaggarTHAKJB]

I think the devs are headed in a good direction as far as balancing the cast goes, though no matter how perfect anything is there will always be critics and you can't please everyone. I guess the main gripe people have with Project M is that it attempts to be melee rather than actually be Melee or brand new game on it's own.

i disagree with this strongly. (most of) the newcharacters in PM are SO extremely unique they can't be compared to ANY melee character.
it has a few new core game mechanics as well. and melee created the best core mechanics for a fighting game ever-why not use it? everybody ripped off the core mechanics off street fighter and made their own unique games out of it.
pm->melee

 

[Teczer0]

Ryoko and Magus inviting me to play PM would get me to play PM. >:[

Some stuff I find silly at a first glance, but really I can't give a good judgement on it until I play for probably at least a month or so.

Its definitely fun, as a competitor though I'd like to see if nerfs/buffs are planned to happen to occur every 6 months (if they constantly occur I mean also doesn't need to be six months, just a regular time interval). I suppose that may already be the case but everytime I play PM I hear theres a new version and such. It'd be nice if we can play with whatever set of chars, then during the last month have it be considered for changes.

 

[JKJ]

My issues with Project: M are threefold:

1. Recovery is too easy
Reminiscent of Brawl, recoveries have been made to ensure safe, easy recovery in a huge number of situations. Every P:M specific character (i.e. a character not in Melee) has a fantastic recovery (obviously exaggeration, I know a few who don't), and more importantly an easy recovery. I am not a fan of the idea that falling offstage is not a huge disadvantage. For characters like Ivysaur, Charizard, Sonic, and others (whom I wont bother to name), recovery is a no-brainer. It takes no skill, there is no risk; there is only risk for the edgeguarder if they try to kill them.

2. Combos are semi-auto
Much in the way of N64, throws=death, which is fine, but instead of a simple throw for a kill, Project: M opts to create the illusion of a combo by making throws lead into guaranteed kill followups. So not only does a throw at high percent equal a kill, but now you can be killed off of a throw even lower because the throw adds percent for the guaranteed finisher. Also, eliminating the power of SDI is, for me, a negative, making combos, again, easier.

3. Characters are designed to be too powerful / simple
Instead of giving each character good tools, and allowing for player innovation, each character has moves for specific instances, where it is undoubtedly the best option.
Ex: Spacie recovering against Marth in Melee : once spacie is forced to go for ledge, can use dtilt, fair, fsmash, dair, bair, neutral b, or nair depending on situation.
Spacie recovering against Squirtle in P:M : once spacie is forced to go for ledge, bubble.
Spacie recovering against Lucario in P:M : Aura Bomb (if you have it, but when don't you have it, you get it from hitting SHIELDS as well as players)
There are nigh-innumerable examples of this phenomenon, both in combos and edgeguarding.
Instead of opting for better core tools, the developers gave each character moves for each situation.

3 and a half: NO LIGHTSHIELD

3 and three quarters: SONIC EXISTS

 

[Steelia]

I played it for about a week. It was fun. But then I wanted more. I started replacing textures, then character models, then stages... That's when I realized, I was still playing a hacked Brawl. A much more refined & awesome experience than vSSBB, but still a hack. It's like learning how to hack Super Mario World - reworking levels, replacing music, even recreating or changing sprites... At the end of the day, it's still considered a SMW hack and not its own game.

By the by, SSBM is totally hackable, so why refine SSBB when we can refine the original? It may not have as many characters or stages, but we make do with what we have Still, Project M has brought new fans from SSBB, and that's pretty great. If the SSBM scene dies out & Project M becomes the new thing competitively, I'd rather that hack than Brawl+ or something.

 

[Bones0]

Most of the stuff people have posted I agree with, so I'll just add one thing that no one has brought up yet is that all of the stages are really large. It's not as big of a problem it would have been in Melee obviously because the chars got speed boosts all around, but it really feels like it takes away from the element of stage control. Some stages are so ridiculous that even if you do perfect DDing and zoning with attacks to push back an opponent, they still have plenty of room to work with. In Melee, stocks are frequently decided by one very subtle moment where a player gains just a tiny bit of space, but that doesn't happen in P:M. The issue is compounded with all the extreme mobility options provided by certain attacks (Sonic's spindash, Ike's side-B, etc.) and the buffed recoveries (going so far as to give many characters options after up-Bing like attacking and airdodging. It doesn't break most characters obviously, but it ruins the feel of how edgeguarding works. It's supposed to be about one guy guarding the edge (duh). Instead it's a borderline DBZ battle where the recovering opponent is simply slightly disadvantaged, if at all. The game would need a pretty huge overhaul to get me more interested. It's a shame because I feel like it's so obvious which things WERE done right.

 

[BTmoney]

I second having the stages smaller on average or making some of them teams online.

 

[EVH]

Marth just feels too choppy and robotic for me. His movement and attacks just make me feel like he's a robot and not a human.

 

[Landry]

[PM is] the greatest competitive smash game of all time.

lol

pm just feels different from melee

this

 

[EPsilon933]

Reasons why I don't play Project M

1. There is no Melee feel to it. I think it's mostly the physics
2. The game feels too technical (Is l canceling manual in PM? Having it manual is very stupid imo)
3. The character designs are too contrived

 

[Deleted member]

i play PM over melee now almost exclusively. even as flawed as some aspects are, it's still less flawed than melee- and no, melee is not a perfect game. we simply ignore the imperfect parts because of their relatively low impact on tournaments.

things i'd change about PM to make it better:
-fix sonic
-fix Ice Climbers my way
-fix zelda
-add samus/yoshi/kirby

 

[-LzR-]

My issue with the game is how it feels like a lame combination of Brawl and Melee. It looks like Brawl and feels kinda like Melee, but it's not better than either of those games so I will always just choose one of the 2 instead of playing a silly mod. Oh and the new characters are dumb.

 

[DoH]

The characters are way too big which is part of why they feel clunky. Like Charizard just feel so bulky

Plus it's not finish so I don't see why I should invest time in learning something that could change dramatically in 4 months

 

[R2_GP]

SD remix anybody????

 

[Bones0]

SD remix anybody????

lol