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Why do people dislike Melee and Melee players?

KirinKQP

Smash Journeyman
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Each installment of the series pretty much has its own group or "fandom" for the lack of a better word which they are pretty much loyal to that game, and that game only. They might play around in the other games, but they focus on one game, like SSB4 or Brawl. From looking at YouTube comments, reddit debates and the like, it looks like it is a common idea to hate Melee if you don't play it. Why is that?

I've heard of the stereotype that Melee players are just total douchebag teens who just play Fox and John every match they lose. The people I find in tournaments are usually good people who are actually respectful.
 
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dakotaisgreat

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I don't hate melee. It's a good game.

Melee players however tend to be elitists who will **** on you and call you a casual if you prefer a different smash game. Most of my interaction with the melee community is just people flinging **** at others and insulting them and their games of choice. This includes some of my actual friends as well as online, and for the love of God please don't go into a smash 4 tournament stream just to **** post about how boring the game is compared to melee. That's ****ing obnoxious. Recently on this website in the biggest smash 4 thread about the current tier list someone even went in there to **** post about smash 4 and say that if it wasn't for Melee the smash Bros series would have died out already. I'm just sick of you mother ******, I get it. Melee is a very technically complicated game that's very challenging to play. Fine. We know. Now **** off. There really is something very elitist about the melee community and I think that anyone who denies it is either intentionally being dishonest with themselves or thinks "well I'M not a melee elitist so that means nobody else is either!" Most melee "fans" don't even ****ing play the game. They just watch it on twitch and youtube and then **** on the rest of us because our game is simple, boring, easy, for babies, etc.

Disclaimers so people don't get butthurt
-I know there's plenty of people that don't do this, this has to be the case with such a large community.
-saying "most of my exposure to melee players" is an anecdote, I know.
-Im not talking about the melee community on this website, I don't really browse the melee section of smash boards.
-Remember, I'm not talking about YOU. We have probably never interacted before.
 

MercuryPenny

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being completely honest, it's because there are a bunch of 12-year-old edgelords who whack it to mango plays and go around the youtube comments posting mediocre-at-best bait on smash 4 and brawl vods.

melee twitch chats are also usually populated by similarly toxic children, and any stream that contains both melee and smash 4 is inevitably going to be filled with ResidentSleeper emotes because le smash 4 is boring meme.

the more mature members of melee's scene also tend to brush them off as mere nuisances but like, half the time, they're an outsider's first exposure to melee's community. you really should be disowning and calling these kids out. it's causing a lot of people to resent melee and never touch the game, and for a game which already has an extraordinarily high skill floor and completely unforgiving meta, that's nowhere near a good thing.
 

JagerCrush

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There's definitely an elitist attitude. Melee is more technical and fast paced compared to other smash games. There seems to be a seemingly civil war between Melee and Sm4sh. A lot of it is just fans of both games being immature and getting enjoyment out of getting a rise out of people in twitch chats or youtube/reddit comments.
The two games are somewhat intertwined. Combo videos on youtube show clips from both games and many tournaments run both games. Sm4sh has continuously run overtime of its time slot so melee fans have had to wait for sm4sh to end for melee to start. They end up viewing sm4sh while waiting but a slower paced game when you're used the faster pace of Melee can seem boring. But instead of waiting patiently or doing something else, people take the "opportunity" to talk down of something different simply bc they personally dislike it.
Part of the blame goes to non-Melee fans as well as people bash Melee and then fans of Melee take it personally. People will continue to be rude and trash talk and put others down to make themselves feel better, making comments like "everyone in Melee just plays Fox" trying to goad Melee fans into an argument.
Melee fans are very passionate and very loyal to Melee. So many of us find it hard to let things go.
 

CAUP

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While I think the previous answers definitely have some important truth to them, I think a really big variable being ignored is that smash 4 players view melee players as elitists because it benefits them to view melee players as elitists. I think a lot of smash 4 players feel intimidated or threatened by melee in general. I mean it is an older game which is more technical and more flashy than smash 4. It's easier to see the depth in melee than the depth in smash 4 just because melee is flashier and more technical. And when confronted by the claim that melee is a better game, which in itself is not at all elitist to say, if phrased as an opinion, the vast majority of smash 4 players feel super defensive because they don't really know enough about melee to really say for sure one way or the other whether that is true (and that's not bad or anything, there's nothing wrong with this position). I think the claim that melee is better, which indeed most melee players believe (and again, this doesn't make them elitists at all. It's probably their favorite game ever so it makes sense they probably think it is the best game), is first offensive to smash 4 players because smash 4 players naturally love smash 4. And second is troubling to smash 4 players because it is difficult to be 100% sure melee isn't actually a better game. So I think the natural reaction is to avoid the issue but just taking the blame out on the people saying "Melee is better" instead of actually confronting the statement. And a really easy way to do this is to call the person saying it an elitist.

Also, I am not saying that there are not elitists in melee because that is completely not true. I am saying that it is helpful for a lot of smash 4 players to generalize melee players as elitists. If you actually interact with melee players in real life, there basically isn't any elitism there- like, at all. Most melee players think melee is better than smash 4. But I mean that's why they play melee. They like melee more.

Also another reason I think the melee community is perceived as elitist, is because they sort of are. And why are they elitist? Brawl. Brawl made melee elitist. Because to preserve the community it was sort of constantly necessary to be saying melee is better than Brawl. If that hadn't been said, the competitive scene would be dead and smash 4 wouldn't even exist. Because Brawl would have been the new standard. How bad brawl was competitively made melee elitist. And then when smash 4 comes along and is actually (at worst) an okay competitive game, people just didn't completely adjust. Or at least the perception didn't adjust. And keep in mind a lot of the best smash 4 players use to play brawl so they naturally have some bad blood there with melee players (which is of course justified as they loved brawl when it was played).

Basically I think it is a lot of factors. That said, melee players in general just aren't elitists.
 

R3D3MON

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Each installment of the series pretty much has its own group or "fandom" for a lack of better words in which they are pretty much loyal to that game. They might play around in the other games, but they focus on one game, like SSB4 or Brawl. From looking at YouTube comments, reddit debates and the like, it looks like it is a common idea to hate Melee if you don't play it. Why is that?

I've heard of the stereotype that Melee players are just total douchebag teens who just play Fox and John every match they lose. The people I find in tournaments are usually good people who are actually respectful.
This is the analogy I see with this situation:

Melee players not liking Smash 4 is legitimate. There are so many aspects of Smash 4 that is limiting in nature and melee players hate that. Totally fine argument.
However some melee players (mostly lower level scrubs) will extend that hate to Smash 4 players, which is not ok.

This is similar to how lower level/casual Smash 4 players tend to direct their hate towards one character to the player that is using the character, so instead of just disliking a character (e.g. Sonic), they start hating the players that also use the character (e.g. StaticManny). This surprisingly also happens rather frequently in the supposedly most mature forum, Smashboards.

This is caused by many factors as others described, but I think general ignorance from lower level players and bandwagon/group mentality play a big part in this situation. However, it is important to keep in mind that your observation is really only applicable for Youtube comment sections, Twitch, and the like, which are definitely not representative of any major groups in melee or S4.


I don't hate melee. It's a good game.

Melee players however tend to be elitists who will **** on you and call you a casual if you prefer a different smash game. Most of my interaction with the melee community is just people flinging **** at others and insulting them and their games of choice. This includes some of my actual friends as well as online, and for the love of God please don't go into a smash 4 tournament stream just to **** post about how boring the game is compared to melee. That's ****ing obnoxious. Recently on this website in the biggest smash 4 thread about the current tier list someone even went in there to **** post about smash 4 and say that if it wasn't for Melee the smash Bros series would have died out already. I'm just sick of you mother ******, I get it. Melee is a very technically complicated game that's very challenging to play. Fine. We know. Now **** off. There really is something very elitist about the melee community and I think that anyone who denies it is either intentionally being dishonest with themselves or thinks "well I'M not a melee elitist so that means nobody else is either!" Most melee "fans" don't even ****ing play the game. They just watch it on twitch and youtube and then **** on the rest of us because our game is simple, boring, easy, for babies, etc.

Disclaimers so people don't get butthurt
-I know there's plenty of people that don't do this, this has to be the case with such a large community.
-saying "most of my exposure to melee players" is an anecdote, I know.
-Im not talking about the melee community on this website, I don't really browse the melee section of smash boards.
-Remember, I'm not talking about YOU. We have probably never interacted before.

Wow nice job being completely hypocritical and exemplifying the OP's main point.
 
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HMWYBS

Smash Rookie
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I only still play this game bc literally everyone from my scene is chill af. Some of my closest friends are from melee. Can't say I have met someone who has been just downright rude to me. At least, not yet.
 

XenoFalcon95

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I think people who make judgements about the competitive melee scene are actually a lot more close-minded than they'd like to admit. It's well established that melee wasn't meant to be played at any level other than casual 4-player games with items, which is a big argument made by people who criticize competitive melee. But honestly, saying the game should be played the way it was designed to be, and not have it be played at a higher level kinda shows a bit of close mindedness. Just my point of view.
 

Trinsic

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I think a very large amount of the trash talk the melee community receives is just a result of the internet being the internet. In person, everyone I've met at a melee tourney has been very nice and friendly. Yeah, sometimes trash talk happens, but to a much less extent than in the traditional fighting game scene. Melee just being different from other fighting games is a part of it.

But really the gamer internet community will constantly **** on whatever game is popular. Doesn't matter how good it is, if a game is big enough a ton people online will trash talk it and its fans regardless of if they've played it, know anything about it, or even like it themselves. Melee may not be as big as whatever recent AAA titles there've been, but considering the game is a decade and a half old it still has a pretty good amount of momentum regarding the community around it. Very few multiplayer games last that long. I think still having an active community is enough to rile up people who are just looking to troll and get a reaction.

The internet in general just lets people act a lot more tribal and abrasive than they normally are, and statements made on the internet are almost always hyperbolic as ****. In person the only people I've ever met who had anything against competitive melee just didn't like how limiting the rules are. People on the internet will hate everything and everyone, don't let that bother you.

I think people who make judgements about the competitive melee scene are actually a lot more close-minded than they'd like to admit. It's well established that melee wasn't meant to be played at any level other than casual 4-player games with items, which is a big argument made by people who criticize competitive melee. But honestly, saying the game should be played the way it was designed to be, and not have it be played at a higher level kinda shows a bit of close mindedness. Just my point of view.
I agree with this. People being angry about someone playing fox only no items FD is every bit as dumb as people getting angry about someone playing pokefloats with items set to very high. People have fun with the game in their own ways, that's why the options exist.

I do think that the Gentleman's Clause isn't as well known as it should be, but imo its existence almost totally negates the criticism over banned stages.
 

Plunder

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If you play Melee and you can keep up with its demand and pace then you love it. If you can't then you just become really hateful of it since its 15 years old and still undeniably the best Smash game. Perhaps the best there ever will be. No other competitive game has survived and thrived as long as Melee has. The documentary made for the game isn't even the best it could have been and it still penetrated beyond the fanbase to an astronomical degree.
 

_Hydra_

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Most people tend to put down melee since it isn't as popular as say league or csgo or anything like that.
People don't really view it as a competitive game especially since it's fairly old, but for those that do they get the best of it. I feel like in terms of melee to sm4sh, its just a natural thing that both sides tend to bite at each other because "their game has ____" or "____ is broken in that game". I'm a melee player, I personally don't really mind if sm4sh, or melee, is included in the same events. It's a bad and a good thing, since we all want our own game to have their own event.
If you play an enjoy a certain game in the series, then thats just your preference, even for any reason, especially since we all get the best out of whatever game we play, we don't ever really get to see the bad sides of it.
tbh i think melee is better than sm4sh tho
 

TeddyBearYoshi

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Overall incredibly toxic. I don't think people generally dislike Melee itself or the competitive players, however many (a lot of who don't even play Smash) avoid it because of the consistent toxicity seen around the web. Might not be that way in closed areas or in person, but the public image they display is toxicity, and to an outside viewer, that's all that matters.

There is also a general toxicity and non-inclusiveness of the fighting game community in general people avoid. Places like r/kappa and other come to mind.
 
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Ultrawing

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There is nothing Wrong with Melee, its a good game in it's own Right.

Elitists is what kinda Ruins Competitive Melee for me and Why I never Tried to play Melee Competitively
 

ItsMeBrandon

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There's a notable difference between talking about Melee vs. talking about its players. Sure, some people don't really like Melee itself and prefer Smash 4 or even Brawl, but that's just as fair as disliking either of those games and preferring Melee.

This kind of discussion tends to focus on the players/communities, not so much the games, and I'm very aware that all Smash communities have their own bad apples as well as genuinely respectable people.

A lot of the general attitude towards a community depends on exposure; if you don't play Melee, you likely don't participate in Melee tournaments, and you likely don't visit Melee forums on any Smash fansite. That means there's a very good chance that people who don't play Melee will be mostly exposed to the Melee community through less-than-mature diehards of Melee who populate videos, streams, and forums of Brawl or Smash 4 with a lot of toxicity toward those games. Instead of being exposed to the likely much more mature parts of the Melee community that you wouldn't see unless you went to a Melee tournament or forum.

As someone who follows Smash 4 more closely than Melee, I can say that I personally see a lot more toxicity from Melee fans than from Smash 4/Brawl fans (and I know you don't have to be from the Melee community to be toxic), and it gets pretty tiring. I've seen a fair share of very chill and mature Melee fans as well, don't get me wrong. But I think a lot of Melee "elitists" will go out of their way to bother Smash 4 and Brawl fans who mind their own business, and it's tedious to deal with them.
 

Plunder

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Except for maybe Street Fighter 2 or Starcraft Brood War, but those are very different games than melee :p
Where are the massive national and international tourneys for these games still?

Both these games were not in their original release even at their "peak" - Star craft BW is an expansion that could be modded, SFII was actually the 2 re-releases and the tournament/turbo editions

Did either of these games as released fall off then see numbers that doubled or tripled and maintained >10 years after release even with other active successors like Smash did?
 

Milky2Milk

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I don't get the complaints about melee elitists.

:?:
I was introdused to melee via Smash 4, so I have been in both communities, and I have met more Smash 4 elitists who hate on melee and brawl for sterotipical reasons: brawl is slow and melee elitists.

I love all the games in the SSB series so, m
aybe it's just me...

:starman:
 
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FalcoSBM1990

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Why do people dislike Melee and Melee players?

Well, it's because we're at different times with many different mentalities within the subject, the competitive scene became more popular as time passed and such popularity brought a new VIP or a new character, the so-called 'casual-gamer'.

Melee, mostly stemmed from conservative-gamers and if you like it or not, it's a CLOSED AND A SELECTIVE GAMING MOVEMENT, which does not tolerate casual-gaming, a conservative-gamer, likes to be challenged beyond its limits, a conservative gamer is addicted of competition and sometimes they would even love the idea to never ever find a limit within their gaming growth development.( the game should have an infinite room development as possible)

Casual-gamers plays for fun, they're satisfiable gamers who don't really demand complexity, they aren't that exigent like the conservative-gamers, it's a loose gaming movement and when they meet with the conservative side, they feel excluded.

When we talk about quantities, the casual-gamer is the majority unlike the conservative-gamer who's the minority and when the conservative side excludes the casual one due to known reasons, the conservative side is accused as an arrogant gaming movement, despite it isn't the case because it's just PURE NATURAL SELECTION, because in the very deep, we have our wild instincts.
 
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CAUP

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FalcoSBM1990 FalcoSBM1990 Well part of the problem are actual elitists like you who think competitive players are somehow better than casual players. Both just play the game differently, that's it.
 

R3D3MON

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FalcoSBM1990 FalcoSBM1990 Well part of the problem are actual elitists like you who think competitive players are somehow better than casual players. Both just play the game differently, that's it.
I don't think he is necessarily saying casual gamers are bad, he is just laying out the fundamental differences in mentality between casual and competitive gamers, and how this difference leads to friction and hostility between the two gamer types, such as casuals believing that competitive players are "elitist" or arrogant because they actually cannot understand how important competition and improving as a player ("getting good") is for competitive players.
 
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BagrB0y

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I feel like part of it would be due to the higher mechanical difficulty of Melee compared to Brawl / S4
 

BagrB0y

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Although it is also definitely worth mentioning people who just trashtalk online, even if they aren't necessarily super good you can quickly get a 'melee elitist' group of loud (if a minor section of the total melee playerbase) online trashtalkers.
 

KirinKQP

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People who are competitive usually go to Melee for the ever changing skill ceiling and crap on others who aren't up for the challenge, I assume.
 

Lil Puddin

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Oh Z:zeldamelee:EL:zelda:DA:4zelda:S help me. I have to be nice because Melee is still precious to me and features my favorite version (playstyle/kit wise) of Peach and Jigglypuff.

Anyway~ Melee is toxic by nature, not because of the players, although some of the more oblivious overly-competitive ones don't help out. So describing it to new players or potential fans is like trying to sell someone clearly-contaminated cheese, bread, or peanut butter. Yes. Those things are amazing and we want to eat them right now because they give us life. But when contaminated they are less amazing and we don't want to be near them at all or hear about them or even see them.

The gap created between new players and veterans is hard to cross. Usually it requires the player to grow up with the game (got a time machine to 2001?) or to have a bunch of different practice partners who are of the same skill level and also want to improve. Playing for fun is an option too, but Melee is a game where you either set goals to go to the mountain top or just avoid the mountain altogether. I'm not sure if that's because of the naturally competitive/SUPER SRS OR DIE spirit of the game or because the game's from 16 years ago and there's a more accessible/more populated updated version of Smash Bros out.
 
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_Hydra_

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I've only been playing melee for two years, so i started when i was about 13.
The community is always going to try to find ways to bring you down just because it's really competitive, but you shouldn't let it bother you.
I feel like melee isn't nearly as toxic as other games like cs:go and LoL. It's probably because they're team based games and you end up putting a ton of trust into other people to do things, that may end up not doing what you wanted them to. Aside from that, their communities are still fairly toxic and my 4 years of league experience have lead me and many other to nothing more than hearing awful things about the games in modern time.
Even still, both games still have really big audiences that also help them to survive despite what people say about it. People still enjoy those games anyway, but they still have to deal with toxicity everywhere, IMO much more than in melee.
 

R3D3MON

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It's interesting that Smash 4 is infinitely easier than melee, but I would argue the toxicity in that game is even worse (with top players like ZeRo apparently getting death threats).
 

XenoFalcon95

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Both melee and ssb4 as communities have had issues in terms of interaction between people in the community. In my opinion, the biggest difference is that melee has had more time to age. I think the community has improved overall (More orgainized tournaments, stricter rulesets, more accepting and diverse playerbase) and a lot of those advancements carried over to ssb4. Tournaments for ssb4 didn't start in the same underground, private, environment that melee did, mostly because of melee's advancements. Say what you will about which game you perfer to play, but if it wasn't for melee, smash brothers as a series would be in a much different place
 

R3D3MON

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Both melee and ssb4 as communities have had issues in terms of interaction between people in the community. In my opinion, the biggest difference is that melee has had more time to age. I think the community has improved overall (More orgainized tournaments, stricter rulesets, more accepting and diverse playerbase) and a lot of those advancements carried over to ssb4. Tournaments for ssb4 didn't start in the same underground, private, environment that melee did, mostly because of melee's advancements. Say what you will about which game you perfer to play, but if it wasn't for melee, smash brothers as a series would be in a much different place
But it is quite interesting to note a new type of hate that is prevalent in Smash 4: "Top-tier characters bias".

Players often get enormous hate in S4 for just playing a top tier, regardless of playstyle, player personality, etc. Smash 4 players also tend to think that "the (central) meta" is somehow a bad thing for a game, which is quite humorous to say the least. This is unlike in Melee, where the hate is more specific to character/playstyle (i.e. HBox).

The question of this thread is imo misleading; the question should be asking why external people hate certain subsets/subgroups of Melee or any other Smash title for that matter.
 

MercuryPenny

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i think a big reason why this top-tier hate exists is because we lied about the game being extraordinarily balanced when the distance between bayonetta and puff is about the same as the distance between fox and kirby in melee.

so when it turned out that, whoops, anyone below high tier is practically irrelevant, a knee-jerk reaction ensued and suddenly anyone who played an objectively more powerful character was the scum of the earth.

there are also ignorant spectators who hate on things for being "boring to watch" because there isn't any surface-level flashiness. this is true of both melee and smash 4 and is inevitable when they're being pushed as spectator sports.
 

Zerp

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i think a big reason why this top-tier hate exists is because we lied about the game being extraordinarily balanced when the distance between bayonetta and puff is about the same as the distance between fox and kirby in melee.
I partially agree with you but I think that's an big overstatement, it's true that Smash 4's balance was and still is very overhyped by the community but :4jigglypuff:is a far stronger character than :kirbymelee: was and :4bayonetta: is arguably not as good as :foxmelee: is, the gap between :4jigglypuff: and :4bayonetta:'s still wide but it's not :kirbymelee: to :foxmelee: wide.


Anyway, I think a lot of people hate Melee because they see some random stream monsters being themselves and think that attitude applies to most of the Melee community when it doesn't.
 

R3D3MON

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I partially agree with you but I think that's an big overstatement, it's true that Smash 4's balance was and still is very overhyped by the community but :4jigglypuff:is a far stronger character than :kirbymelee: was and :4bayonetta: is arguably not as good as :foxmelee: is, the gap between :4jigglypuff: and :4bayonetta:'s still wide but it's not :kirbymelee: to :foxmelee: wide.
Your observation actually supports my statement precisely. The gap between tiers are not as large as past Smash Bros. games (Smash 64, Melee, Brawl, etc.), but regardless people's reaction to "the meta" seems to be highly intolerant and salty in the S4 community for some weird reason. It feels like a significant vocal subset of the Smash 4 community have never played a fighting game with defined metas before S4, so these new players are off-put by the competitive aspects of fighting games (adapting to the meta, getting good, etc.) and thus overreact to Smash 4 meta/top-tier characters being played by competitive players, which is very pathetic and more toxic than anything else a small subset of the melee community has ever spouted.


This goes back to what FalcoSBM1990 FalcoSBM1990 was saying about the competitive mindset and how this mentality is off-putting or outright undesirable for more casual players, which seems to be a rather significant and vocal portion of the Smash 4 community, at least to outsiders of the Smash Bros. competitive scene.
 
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MercuryPenny

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MemorialDime
I partially agree with you but I think that's an big overstatement, it's true that Smash 4's balance was and still is very overhyped by the community but :4jigglypuff:is a far stronger character than :kirbymelee: was and :4bayonetta: is arguably not as good as :foxmelee: is, the gap between :4jigglypuff: and :4bayonetta:'s still wide but it's not :kirbymelee: to :foxmelee: wide.
eh, i disagree. bayonetta has an insane amount of options and obliterates otherwise viable characters, puff is basically just a ball of weaknesses who only arguably has even matchups. i'd say at the very least the distance is comparable.
 

XenoFalcon95

Smash Cadet
Joined
Apr 19, 2017
Messages
34
Location
ON, Canada
i think a big reason why this top-tier hate exists is because we lied about the game being extraordinarily balanced when the distance between bayonetta and puff is about the same as the distance between fox and kirby in melee.

so when it turned out that, whoops, anyone below high tier is practically irrelevant, a knee-jerk reaction ensued and suddenly anyone who played an objectively more powerful character was the scum of the earth.

there are also ignorant spectators who hate on things for being "boring to watch" because there isn't any surface-level flashiness. this is true of both melee and smash 4 and is inevitable when they're being pushed as spectator sports.
And that sucks, because one of the things about smash as a spectator sport is that there's so much going on that the player doesn't see. At the absolute top level of play mindgames happen practically every second, and the players have to plan ahead, consider their opponent's options in relation with their own, and excecute as fast and precislay as they can. Most spectators get all hyped when they see flashy techskill but there's sooooo much more to the game than looking cool.
 
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