What Would Get You Guys Interested in Project M?

[Giygacoal]

The sound effects are so lame. Strong hits don't feel like strong hits.

Knee someone in P:M and then knee again in melee. Melee's knee is like getting hit by lightning while P:M's knee is like a tap.

Well, InternetExplorer finished up the easy sound effect replacing code. It's possible that a future version of P:M will have better sfx such as that. If not, you would at least get the option to add it in yourself.

 

[choknater]

the game is straight up fun. the quality game itself is enough to spread its popularity

but to REALLY answer the thread title:

a documentary of its production

 

[ItalianStallion]

However, this last bit was silly, you literally turned around and did exactly what you took issue with. Also try not to state your opinions on blatantly subjective material as facts, it really detracts from your credibility. I love PM too, but acting like that wont get much done, on top of that most of the posts in this thread have been refreshingly productive and reasonable, I just can't honestly say I understand where you are coming from with that last little quip.

Calling out other people on ignorance, attitude, and logical fallacies does not equal doing the same thing as the ones perpetrating such.

I find it hard to debate with the fact (Not Opinion) that a competitive fighting games should be balanced, and PM is undeniably more balanced than Melee. That along with the fact (Not Opinion) that PM is closer to being Melee in feel, gameplay, etc. than being apart from it makes the similarities more apparent than the slight differences in engine quality and such. Therefore, PM is undeniably a better game. People can still like Melee better, but they can't really create solid arguments against the fact that PM is a better balanced competitive fighting game. Any arguments created against that point most likely end up on some random plane of game philosophy that exists solely for ignoring the fact that PM is more balanced than Melee.

By the way, I'm not a Melee hater in any way (I love Melee), nor am I a Melee community hater, which is why I had such a strong reaction to the amount of BS and Immaturity in this thread. It's like many Melee players have some sort of weird vendetta against PM. I just wasn't expecting that kind of reaction from a community I enjoyed.

Also, I probably should have clarified that when I said most of the posts in here were bad, I meant most of the anti-PM posts (Not all, but most). There were some anti-PM posts in this thread that were fine posts. Along with that, there were posts that weren't anti-PM per-say, but still addressed valid (valid being the important word) complaints. Those posts were fine too. This was my bad. I should have clarified that.

And as a last note, you are right in that the last part of my post was...immature. However, I think sometimes you have to have people willing to call out the BS in noticeable ways in order to enact change.

 

[Niko_K]

If the stage and character proportions were changed to be identical to SSBM. The stages in PM are absolutely massive in size in comparison. Also take away the mechanic that produces an uninterruptable animation from falling from platforms.

 

[The_NZA]

If the stage and character proportions were changed to be identical to SSBM. The stages in PM are absolutely massive in size in comparison. Also take away the mechanic that produces an uninterruptable animation from falling from platforms.

For your initial comment, I am curious: if you have YS (melee), FD, FoD (lagless), BF, Dreamland 64, PS1 then why does it matter that you also have Dracula's Castle, Jungle Japes, SSE Jungle? Especially when you get reasonably sized stages, like Metal Caverns, YS(Brawl), Warioware, Green Hill Zone, Skyworld, PS2 (probably the best stage in a smash game), Castle Seige, Lylat Cruise (now doesn't tilt).

With the new stage striking feature, it's practically undoubtedly better than melee. Melee had a bunch of "unviable" stages in their stagelist and I don't remember you discounting melee for that.

Can you explain, though, what you mean by uninterruptable animations from falling from platforms.

 

[crush]

PS2 (probably the best stage in a smash game)

lol what does that even mean/how did you come to that conclusion

 

[The_NZA]

Pokemon Stadium 2 is a pretty awesome stage because it is wide, has nicely spaced platforms (without too many), flat, and doesn't transform. It is mine (and a number of other peoples) favorite new stage.

 

[omgwtfToph]

melee is like mvc2; the balance (in the upper tiers; obviously the low tiers in melee suck nuts) is very organic and in spite of the lack of patches and **** everything "works out" amazingly

p:m seeks perfect balance but hasn't been able to do so yet. a lot of the things that work in p:m work because they were specifically designed to work, if you will. idk KK made a much more elegant post about a year or two ago basically saying what I'm trying to say

further, it seems like there are a lot of ways to win in p:m that invalidate fighting game fundamentals (i.e. why worry about things like dashdancing/spacing/stage control when you can play sonic lolol!) and maybe I'd be more interested in the game if this wasn't the case

but ultimately none of that even really matters to me. I play melee over p:m because all the homies play melee and p:m players are weird casuals ROFL

 

[choknater]

i enjoy p:m a lot because my bowser is GDLK

 

[whitmorethetoadpirate]

melee is like mvc2; the balance (in the upper tiers; obviously the low tiers in melee suck nuts) is very organic and in spite of the lack of patches and **** everything "works out" amazingly

p:m seeks perfect balance but hasn't been able to do so yet. a lot of the things that work in p:m work because they were specifically designed to work, if you will. idk KK made a much more elegant post about a year or two ago basically saying what I'm trying to say

further, it seems like there are a lot of ways to win in p:m that invalidate fighting game fundamentals (i.e. why worry about things like dashdancing/spacing/stage control when you can play sonic lolol!) and maybe I'd be more interested in the game if this wasn't the case

but ultimately none of that even really matters to me. I play melee over p:m because all the homies play melee and p:m players are weird casuals ROFL

So you're saying that things in Melee weren't "specifically designed" to work? I realize you say that someone else described it much better, but your post just sort of sounds silly the way you worded it.

 

[omgwtfToph]

yes, in fact, a lot of the checks in balances in melee that make it great were almost definitely unintended by the game's creators

 

[whitmorethetoadpirate]

yes, in fact, a lot of the checks in balances in melee that make it great were almost definitely unintended by the game's creators

Such as? I'm not trying to sound like a ****, I seriously don't know what you're specifically referring to.

 

[omgwtfToph]

in a nutshell, the way every top/high tier matchup, at a high level, is really close to even in spite of drastic, drastic differences between characters - in spite of the fact that the creators of the game did not and could not have known about what high level play would construe

 

[CyberZixx]

in a nutshell, the way every top/high tier matchup, at a high level, is really close to even in spite of drastic, drastic differences between characters - in spite of the fact that the creators of the game did not and could not have known about what high level play would construe

This is one of the things that makes Melee so great and special. I would love to read KirbyKaze's post of this topic. Do you remember the thread it was posted in?

 

[Shell]

That is a product of extremely devoted players sticking to mains for many years, leveraging the strengths of their characters as much as possible.

I understand that ongoing development and the relative short life of PM so far (compared to Melee) make it hard to stack up in this regard, but give it time and I think you'll be able to say many of the same things.

 

[The_NZA]

That is a product of extremely devoted players sticking to mains for many years, leveraging the strengths of their characters as much as possible.

I understand that ongoing development and the relative short life of PM so far (compared to Melee) make it hard to stack up in this regard, but give it time and I think you'll be able to say many of the same things.

Exactly. It's pretty obvious that Pika and Doc Mario don't have the same toolset as Falco/Fox. But Axe and Shroomed are probably better than most of their opponents, flat out.

 

[Youkai Master]

I think everyone here should watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w to get an understanding of why the kind of balance that Melee has attained throughout its history is actually quite beautiful and has been a driving force for its continued longevity, and that to claim that PM is inherently a better competitive game because it is "more balanced" than Melee is just an incredibly silly idea.

 

[Rarik]

Perfect Imbalance applies as much to P:M as it does to Melee. Melee just has the advantage of a 12 year old metagame. In fact you could make the argument that P:M is striving towards Perfect Imbalance for the entire cast while for Melee it only truly exists in the top 8 or so.

 

[The_NZA]

I think everyone here should watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w to get an understanding of why the kind of balance that Melee has attained throughout its history is actually quite beautiful and has been a driving force for its continued longevity, and that to claim that PM is inherently a better competitive game because it is "more balanced" than Melee is just an incredibly silly idea.

Why wont this stupid ****ing video die! It keeps getting propagated by idiots who know **** about game design as a bible of sorts.

I've posted these comments before in other threads but I might as well copy paste it here as well so this abomination can sink into obscurity:

That video was super silly. It tried to outline a philosophy of "perfect imbalance" when in reality, their observations about chess and starcraft had nothing to do with them being "too balanced" at all. Chess is "stale" and figured out largely because the metagame is hundreds of years old and the options both players have to explore are minimal (everyone is playing the same "character", whose moveset includes 2 bishops, rooks, knights, 1 king, 1 queen, and pawns). Starcraft gave every individual person three races with insane asymmetry, and the only reason there is a working framework of the optimum strategies of play is because it is also over a decade old with many players playing it on a competitive level.

It isn't about balance and imbalance. It is about maximizing the amount of options and scenarios for players, giving the metagame and number of strats available a greater dynamism. Really, EVERY GAME boils down to viable and unviable strategies, and the more BALANCED a game is while maximizing different gameplays means more strategies are available and more people can be involved in figuring out the metagame as it evolves. The reason League and MtG have a uniquely evolving metagame that everyone can contribute to has less to do with the inherent imbalances and more to do with the fact that the game constantly has new characters/cards being added in, contributing to the longevity of a fresh metagame.

tl:dr
asymmetry and options are important. Not imbalances.

 

[The Golden Donald]

Project M is basically a version of the following fun fighting.

Melee better forever.

 

[ItalianStallion]

I think everyone here should watch this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e31OSVZF77w to get an understanding of why the kind of balance that Melee has attained throughout its history is actually quite beautiful and has been a driving force for its continued longevity, and that to claim that PM is inherently a better competitive game because it is "more balanced" than Melee is just an incredibly silly idea.

I don't see how that's a silly claim at all. A competitive fighting game designed to be for tournaments should be balanced. P.M. and Melee are very similar now, to the point where the differences are few and minor(Compared to the similarities). However, P.M., along with having plenty of fun new things (New characters, better/fairer stages, stage striking controls, crew mode, etc.), also is WAY more balanced than Melee. My point is that considering all that information, why is the claim I made silly at all???

Let's consider the opposite. Let's say that PM had Fox and Falco at Melee level, but the rest of the cast was no better than Melee Mewtwo. Basically the game was even less balanced than Melee is. The only truly viable characters were Fox and Falco. Wouldn't it be silly for someone to claim that PM was a better game because it was less balanced? Of course it would! Because balance and character diversity is very important. Let's say Starcraft only had two factions truly equal with the other, and the third one was significantly worse. Then someone came along and made a mod that made the third faction equal with the other two. Which would be the better game? The mod. Why? Because it's more balanced. What is so silly about that?

It's fine if people still like Melee more, but it's not accurate to argue Melee is more balanced. It is accurate to claim that Melee's long history and metagame has created very interesting interactions between the top tiers, but that does not mean that Melee is the only smash game capable of having that. I'm very confident that after PM turns 12, we'll be seeing the same kind of "Perfect Imbalance" or whatever among the whole cast.

 

[WELM]

Project M is a compromise, and like all compromises it fails to please the cores of both parties. Some claim it has the best of both worlds, but it doesn't, 'cause it's slow like brawl, and has the ugly brawl designs most characters were cursed with (thank God Roy ain't in brawl -lol). I gave it a shot, but I feel it is just a small improvement to brawl; a band-aid on a festering corpse of ******ry.

 

[FlashingFire]

Melee has a lot of elements that are better than Brawl, but graphics is not one of them. There's something to be said for nostalgic appearances, but I'll take Brawl looks over Melee looks any day. I'm also a bit confused as to where you get the idea that P:M is "slow like Brawl" with characters like Falco (who is nearly identical to his celebrated Melee iteration), Lucas, and SONIC.

Anyway. As a formerly casual Brawl player transitioning into the competitive Melee/P:M environment, I've found the wealth of available character exploration and new tactics in the mod far more interesting than the established Melee metagame. Both are loads of fun. Granted, this could just be because I'm better at P:M and the characters I like don't suck as much (as Roy). I expect that when the P:M is finally complete, with all the characters fine-tuned and all the physics figured out and all the uncertainty of change gone, we'll have a game that exceeds the overall experience of its inspiration. But not one that replaces it

 

[Bl@ckChris]

just freaking finish it so a damn metagame can develop and maybe i'll touch it.

but i probably won't cuz i'm too busy trying to learn melee matchups with fox to deal with brawl characters lol.

 

[lordvaati]

Project M is a compromise, and like all compromises it fails to please the cores of both parties. Some claim it has the best of both worlds, but it doesn't, 'cause it's slow like brawl

slow like brawl

slow like brawl

.......have you even played the damn mod?

 

[Bad Cupboard]

He's right. PM is much slower than Melee.
It's like they made it their mission to have all the mechanics from Melee but still make it play like Brawl. Why are recoveries so good? Why can you grab the ledge backwards? Why are there so many characters that focus on camping and projectiles? Why are there so many floaties? Why did they make it less technical?

What really grinds my gears are people brushing all this off as "failure to adapt." **** no, that's not how it works. That assumes that, by default, I should be switching to PM and if I don't then it was my fault I didn't adapt properly, which is complete bull****.
How about instead of ignoring criticisms and complaining about our failure to adapt, you either fix the game or ****ing deal with the fact that some people don't like it.

None of this means PM is bad. It means I and many others like Melee more.

 

[Mr.Jackpot]

What really grinds my gears are people brushing all this off as "failure to adapt." **** no, that's not how it works. That assumes that, by default, I should be switching to PM and if I don't then it was my fault I didn't adapt properly, which is complete bull****.
How about instead of ignoring criticisms and complaining about our failure to adapt, you either fix the game or ****ing deal with the fact that some people don't like it.

None of this means PM is bad. It means I and many others like Melee more.

Partially agree, but the rabid PM fans demanding that everybody drop everything else because Fox and Falco are Satan aren't the same guys making the game.

 

[Bad Cupboard]

See Strong Bad's post on page 1

 

[WELM]

To clarify, I didn't say it was JUST like brawl's speed. Simply that it's like brawl in that IT IS slow. It's between brawl's and Melee's speed. I find it slow because I'm used to Melee's speed. If I weren't used to Melee, I would find PM's speed normal, but alas.
Methinks it is primarily because of Sonic's inclusion that all characters are slow.
In his own games he's much faster than he is in brawl/P:M, but for Sonic to be controllable by the casual player, his speed had to be watered down. The faster something is, the less control there is.
So with Sonic's speed as the bar, and that bar lowered for casual players, and all characters necessarily being much slower than Sonic, all were slowed down as a result.

I should have mentioned also that brawl and P:M feel constraining, which might be the biggest problem. Like when I jump, there's not much freedom in where I go. Melee offers freedom with more options for movement.

FlashingFire, I concede that brawl and PM have better graphics. I never said otherwise. I just find Melee Marth to be less gay than brawl/PM Marth, Melee Fox to be far cooler than brawl/PM Fox. This is the case for most characters and moves. This point doesn't really matter since it's just my opinion shared by many.
Melee Falco is slow horizontally, so comparing him to a P:M Falco to make the point he's not changed speed-wise doesn't mean much to me, though I don't recall fighting a Falco when I played PM, so I can't verify.

From my view, brawl/PM have more characters, but they're mostly ugly and not cool. Especially Ganondorf. It's like with Pokémon. They're getting uglier with every new generation. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IrNaOuCogek So what good is it to me when the options are all gay? I'd rather have less options without the gay.

"Both are loads of fun." True, but I'd rather lose with a cool Roy than win with a slow Marth wielding a shortened sword.

 

[ItalianStallion]

He's right. PM is much slower than Melee.
It's like they made it their mission to have all the mechanics from Melee but still make it play like Brawl. Why are recoveries so good? Why can you grab the ledge backwards? Why are there so many characters that focus on camping and projectiles? Why are there so many floaties? Why did they make it less technical?

What really grinds my gears are people brushing all this off as "failure to adapt." **** no, that's not how it works. That assumes that, by default, I should be switching to PM and if I don't then it was my fault I didn't adapt properly, which is complete bull****.
How about instead of ignoring criticisms and complaining about our failure to adapt, you either fix the game or ****ing deal with the fact that some people don't like it.

None of this means PM is bad. It means I and many others like Melee more.

Is this a troll post? Seriously. Are we even playing the same mod??

PM is not much slower than Melee. It's slightly slower than Melee due to some bugs that haven't been fixed yet.

Melee top tiers had good recoveries, so naturally the rest of the cast of PM should have good recoveries too. True, some recoveries are really good, but that's no different than Peach and Jiggz in Melee. Recoveries probably seem over-powered due to people not learning match-ups well yet. I mean really, how well do you think a character would do in the PM environment with a recovery as bad as Melee Roy?

Grabbing the ledge backwards is not as overpowered as you seem to imply it is. You have to time it right, and it really only benefits a few characters.

There are not that many characters that focus on camping and projectiles. And even so, you don't have to play a character campy. I think mainly Toon Link, Zelda, and Jigglypuff are the only three that are best when played campy/projectile based. Sure you can make arguments for characters like Diddy or Snake or Ivy, etc., but more than likely, you are going to see them performing better when used aggressively. PM is actually a very offensive game. Most characters are about applying offensive pressure with good reads and solid technical skill. Because you have characters like Zelda viable now, it means you are going to see more defensive strategies occasionally, but what would you rather have, PM being just a cast of Fox and Falco clones?

Actually, when you look at camping and projectiles in Melee, who are some of the best at it? Hmmm....Fox and Falco. How many pros do you see relying on that to win games? Very few. Basically, just because you can camp and zone with, let's say, Ivy, does not mean you are going to see that become the main metagame with her. More than likely, the best Ivy players will be the ones that put on good offensive pressure. You should watch some PM matches. They are normally always very exciting due to the game's emphasis on offense and since each character has their own special skills and tools to accomplish their goals, it can make for tense matches.

For the floaties thing, the reason why there are more "floaties" is because there are more viable characters. In Melee, there are plenty of floaties in the cast, it's just most of them aren't viable (Including my main Mewtwo). When the goal is to make everyone viable, you are going to have a bunch of different characteristics and play-styles emerge.

The less technical part is partly due to bugs, but again, the differences between it and Melee are very minute. Pick up Lucas and try to do flashy combos. Pick up Lucario and try to use his OHC to keep juggling an opponent. Or ZSS. Or Wolf. Every character is pretty technical, and the ones who aren't are few and far between (DDD, Bowser, Jiggz, etc.)

I don't care if people like Melee more, that's fine, but I do care when people try to use fallacies to "prove" that Melee is better than PM. I also care when people argue things that obviously show how ignorant they are about what's being argued. Like, earlier when someone said that l-cancel and teching windows were more forgiving in PM. It's those kinds of things that get the PM community upset, because we know how good PM is, and what seems to be stopping other people from realizing it is because they are operating on bad information that was likely just tossed around a Melee group because players "felt" the difference.

 

[whitmorethetoadpirate]

I will admit that Melee does indeed have harder techniques to pull off due to the 1 frame input lag in PM (and of course they're going to remove that), but at the same time due to how changing directions in Melee works (on the ground) the game now feels wonky as **** to me and just plain wrong. It does not flow as well as PM which seems like a worse thing to me, though I'm guessing most people would just say that PM just makes it easier, so it's therefore dumb and less technical.

This isn't saying that I won't go back to Melee because I love the game and spent countless hours on it years prior, I just gotta get the hang of it again. Best part about PM is that if you can play Mario pretty decently then your Doc in Melee almost completely transfers. Seriously, just play the two. They feel nearly identical.

 

[The_NZA]

And just to reiterate: 2.6 is like playing a new game. I know I felt like movement got WAY smoother in 2.6. I recommend anyone not liking the "feel" of PM to try it.

 

[Shadow Huan]

you can still juggle with lucaryu? gotta look up those combos

 

[Landry]

All of the PM fanboys in this thread (I'm looking at you ItalianStallion...) are really only making things worse. Melee fans don't want to hear "have you even played PM - its super fast and balanced, and Fox and Falco arent great, and, and, and..."

I don't care why you like PM. I'm glad that you like it, I think it's great piece of work and is honestly a huge improvement upon the original Brawl engine.

But it isn't Melee. It doesn't feel the same. It's not as fast. It's not as organic. The tech is easier. This is the truth and no amount of logical reasoning will convince die-hard Melee players otherwise.

Stop trying to force people to like PM. Plenty of people already like it, and many more are interested in it as a side event. At the end of the day it's the game you like versus the game I like. Who cares which one I prefer? Attacking my assertion that "PM doesn't feel the same as Melee" isn't going to make me want to play it more.

 

[Rarik]

Lol, Landry, you didn't even read Italian's post did you. He said the complete opposite of what you claim he said in numerous places, but since you didn't even read his post why should I even try to clarify what he actually said in mine, because clearly I'm just a PM fanboy trying to convince you to play PM.

Also, you're the only person to have said Fox and Falco aren't great in PM, which is complete BS.

 

[whitmorethetoadpirate]

All of the PM fanboys in this thread (I'm looking at you ItalianStallion...) are really only making things worse. Melee fans don't want to hear "have you even played PM - its super fast and balanced, and Fox and Falco arent great, and, and, and..."

I don't care why you like PM. I'm glad that you like it, I think it's great piece of work and is honestly a huge improvement upon the original Brawl engine.

But it isn't Melee. It doesn't feel the same. It's not as fast. It's not as organic. The tech is easier. This is the truth and no amount of logical reasoning will convince die-hard Melee players otherwise.

Stop trying to force people to like PM. Plenty of people already like it, and many more are interested in it as a side event. At the end of the day it's the game you like versus the game I like. Who cares which one I prefer? Attacking my assertion that "PM doesn't feel the same as Melee" isn't going to make me want to play it more.

I completely agree with nearly everything you said. But I do have to say that the people arguing for PM (with good arguments, not ones just bashing Melee for being unbalanced) may get some of the people that were on the fence about playing the game or giving it a second chance. If it causes them to do one of those things, I think that's great because they're trying something new that they could come to love even more. And if they end up still loving Melee, that's great too.

That's the beauty of the Smash series: they're all vastly different (barring PM/Melee, they're at least somewhat similar, though they still count since there are fans of one game and not another) so they can all cater to different people's tastes. Only problem with that is that there get to be some overzealous fans for one game that attack the fans of another based on ****ty assertions.

Though I like how this thread has just derailed into bashing Melee/PM instead of just talking about the things that would get the Melee players interested in it.

 

[Double Helix]

Is everybody going to overlook the fact that they are making all the moves good? All the moves are faster, the bad hitboxes are better. I am ok with them trying to make a balanced game, but not every move has to be good, and there are more ways to make a move good than by speeding it up. I love what they are TRYING to do with PM, but the way they are doing it is overall lazy. So far I haven't gotten to play 2.6 so some of this may change, but it all seems like the characters are gimmicky.

 

[Zoler]

what seems to be stopping other people from realizing it is because they are operating on bad information that was likely just tossed around a Melee group because players "felt" the difference

If someone disregards a game completely because of something another person told them, you probably didn't want that guy in the first place anyway. I doubt that there's more than a few who does this.

 

[Big Red]

Yoshi!

10char

 

[whitmorethetoadpirate]

Is everybody going to overlook the fact that they are making all the moves good? All the moves are faster, the bad hitboxes are better. I am ok with them trying to make a balanced game, but not every move has to be good, and there are more ways to make a move good than by speeding it up. I love what they are TRYING to do with PM, but the way they are doing it is overall lazy. So far I haven't gotten to play 2.6 so some of this may change, but it all seems like the characters are gimmicky.

So I almost agree with all of this post too, especially that some of the characters seem to have some bad gimmicks. Examples include Boozer as a whole, Wario's dash grab/side B (but the rest of his character seems pretty solid), and maybe some others but I'd love to hear who you think feels that way as well. Gimmicks = bad because once people learn how to avoid them, the character becomes worse. Mixups = good. Last points are obvious, but whatever; never hurts to reiterate it.

However, when you say that not every move has to be good, that seems somewhat silly. I feel every move should be good/usable in some situation. I think most Ganondorf mains will agree that they wish they had a different utilt or even Fox players saying that they would like a different fair. Of course they would have to be balanced themselves, and you can even argue that Fox can use his fair in certain situations but Ganon's utilt? Not likely.