What Would Get You Guys Interested in Project M?

[NWRL]

If it's not in Melee, it's anti-Smash.

Well it doesn't make any sense. Zelda's fire bombs are anti smash? I didn't know stage control wasn't a part of Smash.

Snakes entire kit revolves around stage control and being a huge ****. :I

 

[trash?]

shadic's project m backroom, it's a jokey-joke

tbh this thread is a very good indicator of why PM should try to distance itself away from being related to melee, because it's created a mindset of "if this game most recently made in 2013 doesn't act exactly like the game I play made in 2001, then it's awful and I hate it"

if I wanted a game that functioned like a 1:1 melee clone, I'd play melee. I don't, though, I want to play something a bit more ambitious than that

 

[allthetriumph]

I think that there is already a ton of player overlap.
Anyone that has not switched over by now, probably isn't going to do so regardless of what project M changes.

 

[Vashimus]

I gotta agree with Canon. P:M is just its own beast. It doesn't need to be in contest with anything. Moving forward, Project M should be focusing on catering to the people who actually play the game. Trying to please everyone in the Melee community is a pipe dream, and just creates bad blood.

 

[The_NZA]

I think that there is already a ton of player overlap.
Anyone that has not switched over by now, probably isn't going to do so regardless of what project M changes.

I don't think this is true at all. I have met a ton of Melee players who gave PM a first try in the last two weeks. The return of Roy and Mewtwo, Samus, Ice Climbers, Yoshi, and Kirby brought the game a lot of hype. And if melee players could play the game at the same time as melee without it eroding their melee timings and techskill even by .01%, I think they would...which is why I think, as the engine becomes a closer reflection to melee's, PM's audience will keep growing. Also, I do want to reecho that this topic is really important and some great points have been made. I think the recovery discussions have resulted in a lot of game changes in the last 6 months since a lot of characters got recoveries nerfed (Wario, DDD, Lucario, Sonic, Link, Tether characters, etc.)

 

[MookieRah]

I second the notion that this thread should remain open, because I believe that the P:M team does want their engine to mirror melee as much as possible, and they want to hear legitimate criticisms of their game. It's fairly easy to comb through this thread and spot what is a nitpick and what is something that has merit as well.

 

[Papa+Stone]

What would get me inetrested in this terrible thread. Look i already get enough of this fox bashing and anti melee propaganda from the pm boards i dont need it spreading into places i actually care about

 

[DrinkingFood]

oh lawdy, I opened the thread and one of the first posts I read is m2k claiming the hitstun is greater and the falling speed accelerations are greater and thats why spacies get comboed harder
dude like, i know that post was over a month old but like, do you fact check stuff that actually has fact checkable stuff before you say them
it doesn't get any more fact-checkable then numbers, you can just look at them in brawl box usually

 

[K.Louis]

oh lawdy, I opened the thread and one of the first posts I read is m2k claiming the hitstun is greater and the falling speed accelerations are greater and thats why spacies get comboed harder
dude like, i know that post was over a month old but like, do you fact check stuff that actually has fact checkable stuff before you say them
it doesn't get any more fact-checkable then numbers, you can just look at them in brawl box usually

Hitstun/knockback formulas are the same but new and buffed characters have attacks that do more hitstun and/or juggle better (e.g. Zelda's USmash)

 

[DrinkingFood]

It's not possible for moves to have "more hitstun" as the formula is the same for every move and increases only as knockback does. Meteors on grounded opponents are an exception, and so are wall/ceiling bounces. Knockback stacking can change this too, but only really affects teams play, ganon's dsmash, and falco's combos in general. You're mistaking multi-hit moves that end quickly and/or have lots of hitlag/low SDI multipliers for moves with "more hitstun", of which there are none. Any particular character being launched a certain distance/angle always has the same amount of hitstun for that distance. I'm not saying that some characters do or don't have an easy time comboing, but the reasoning M2K had for it is misinformation.

 

[1MachGO]

I feel like there are some legitimate criticisms in this thread. Unfortunately, a lot of it is buried under too much exaggeration; courtesy of the internetz. People seriously need to present themselves in a more articulate manor and respect what the PMBR is doing.

As a long time fan and supporter of the project, I feel its biggest fault is a slight lack in cohesion. Looking back, I actually think that Demo 1 was the most focused release... and I imagine that the smaller team size was responsible for this. From what little insight I've gotten over the years, I kind of imagine the BR operating like a democracy and there is probably a lot of disagreement/variety in terms of design approach. Someone mentioned that the PMBR isn't a company, but that is somewhat a downfall. People are given assignments and then operating on their own idealizations without any strict expectations. This isn't always a bad thing, but when it comes to creative projects, a single leader is highly beneficial. There needs to be someone who can see the forest for the trees and have final say on what meets the vision for the project. Its probably too late to make a change like this, but I feel like a lot of the complaints you'll find in this thread will be a product of P:M's eclectic nature.

 

[standardtoaster]

We do have a team of higher-ups that has final say on things. It's not just people working on whatever they like and it always appearing in the next release.

 

[JJTheJetPlane]

I always felt that all the melee vets should've been added back into pm first and then slowly over time add in the brawl characters. It would've been much easier to balance out the melee vets by themselves since we have much more experience with these characters. Some brawl characters had to receive entirely new movesets/drastic changes which essentially is like adding in new characters into melee. Most people seem to be complaining about the designs for Sonic, Ivysaur, Charizard, DDD, and Rob (all brawl characters) since their combos feel forced or they have janky mechanics. Melee has janky mechanics, and I'm pretty sure the dev team knew what they were doing when they designed Sheik's f-tilt > fair, Falco's shine > dair, Fox's dair > shine, anyone's d-throw > aerial, etc. I figured out Ness djc uair juggles before melee was even released, I'm sure the game designers were smarter than 10 year old me. In pm, I personally feel like they changed Gannon and Bowser a bit too much and gave Luigi weird hitboxes, but otherwise I think they did a pretty good job with the melee characters (Ness is still bad though). I can't really comment on the brawl characters since I don't really play them, but Lucario and Rob seem weird.

Edit: I really like the fact that they gave Ness a "shine" and gave him his 64 dair. It helps his combo game immensely since it was always extremely hard to combo with him. I think only a handful of people could ever pull off the Ness mofo combo in a match. I'm really proud to say I can do it, but it took me years to practice a "simple" bnb. If they fixed pk fire to be more like a normal projectile or make his fair/dash attack one hit instead of multi hits with the same range he would be pretty good/godlike.

 

[1MachGO]

We do have a team of higher-ups that has final say on things. It's not just people working on whatever they like and it always appearing in the next release.

I wasn't trying to imply that every idea got in and I apologize if it seemed that way. However, my overlying point still remains and that's the fact that P:M lacks a director. No council of people will ever have the same vision on everything and the project is going to reflect that. P:M is still amazing but when the design goals aren't completely strict/specific then players will criticize the aspects which confuse them. You can't honestly believe that having a relatively unchanged Melee top 8 and Lucario in the same game doesn't send mixed messages

 

[The_NZA]

I wasn't trying to imply that every idea got in and I apologize if it seemed that way. However, my overlying point still remains and that's the fact that P:M lacks a director. No council of people will ever have the same vision on everything and the project is going to reflect that. P:M is still amazing but when the design goals aren't completely strict/specific then players will criticize the aspects which confuse them. You can't honestly believe that having a relatively unchanged Melee top 8 and Lucario in the same game doesn't send mixed messages

I don't think it sends mixed messages but I think it does cause mixed emotions in a fanbase. But to be honest, keeping the melee top 8 meant ANY creative direction would have let to mixed emotions in some faction of the fan base. Unless every added character was a clone of a Melee character.

 

[1MachGO]

I think its mixed messages in the sense that its presenting different idealizations of great gameplay and what the project is trying to achieve. Replicating the top 8 characters suggests that the PMBR believes in them as a reference and that they embody melee gameplay. However, incorporating characters with drastically different mechanics clashes with those implications.

This isn't to suggest that one direction is better than the other, and its probably too late to make changes, but its a inconsistency that is going to cause a lot of confusion and division. Are people right or wrong for calling Lucario/any other really unique character "anti-smash"?

 

[The_NZA]

I Are people right or wrong for calling Lucario/any other really unique character "anti-smash"?

I think my main response boils down to essentially this. As i've already mentioned, float canceling feels pretty anti-smash, as does a dair like Falco's. Rest as a move seems anti smash, but its been there from the beginning. If assuming anti-smash means "takes its cues from trends commonly found in the game", it becomes to easy to see that the melee top 8 are defined by exceptions that separate them from character decisions that define the rest of the cast. This is largely because Smash itself is an incredibly creative game where even two clones like fox and falco play completely different. I feel like the people making the anti-smash argument are usually saying "this is something we haven't seen before in the game, and because the person who came up with it's name doesn't start with Sa and end in Kurai, it doesn't belong in the game".

Lucario obviously is a pretty ballsy implementation of a starkly different idea that really isn't smash (although i think it works in the universe). But people need to chill on the *****ing on things like Wario's dash grab looking like his forward b, Snake's stuff, ness/lucas magnet stuff, Ike's forward b.

 

[1MachGO]

Yeah, I think a lot of the "anti-smash" stuff can be traced back to a discrepancy between character identity and gameplay identity. While all the top melee characters have unique attributes, they also share a lot of broad similarities; primarily in exploitable recoveries, vulnerability to punishes, and a heavy reliance on intelligent movement. Its these broad similarities that help identify Melee gameplay and why Jigglypuff has often been considered a principle exception among the melee tops in terms of obeying traditional meta.

In P:M, a lot of the characters seem designed with emphasis towards having a unique identity. Attacks and attributes are heavily optimized to favor certain playstyles and it produces a lot of different results. This includes great recoveries (glides and air dashes), absorbing punishes (armor), or emphasizing zoning/walling and simplified movement (improved projectiles/cancellable movement techniques). At the price of heavily distinguishing characters it causes a lot of them to seem very "anti-meta" and "anti-smash" when compared to the more homogeneous Melee tops. It also gives Jigglypuff, a once dominant character, more competition because she is no longer the only character breaking the "rules".

Having noticed this, it brings a lot of clarity to some of the criticisms towards P:M, namely Vro's "forced design" thread. On one hand, there is a lot of merit to the "romanticism" towards Melee's stronger gameplay identity. The fact that there were homogeneous attributes is definitely an ingredient towards what made Melee so intensely deep and forged such a balanced meta amongst the top and high tier characters. However, the really fresh and unique directions found by emphasizing character identity has allowed us to the play the game in ways that we never thought were possible. Both have strong arguments which support them which is why it may have been a misstep to have tried both.