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Swimming was cool! At the very least, I'd like to see a mechanic wherein characters underwater have drastically reduced falling speeds.
i think the problem with gliding was it was a nightmare to balance, its a lot easier to remove a mechanic that is giving only a fraction of the characters something than it is to balance it to every other character it makes sense
history has proven the opposite of what you stated.
It has also PROVEN what he is saying. Jiggly was not top tier for some time in Melee.
The problem here is that you assume there is one supremely important thing that makes all else unimportant. Yes, player skill matters more than everything else, but that doesn't make everything else irrelevant. It is possible for skill AND balance to matter. It IS vitally important for developers to balance a game.
Understanding of a game improves over time. Jigglypuff being better than people originally thought does not prove that all characters are like that. It's quite the opposite.
Perfect balance isn't really a thing. It's more you want as low of a character variance as possible without being 0 or homogenizing the cast. There's actually a very good argument for some levels of imbalance being healthy for a game and keeping its metagame active. If characters all have 50/50 matchups, there's little reason to evolve new strategies in some cases (necessity IS the mother of invention, after all).
On a deeply competitive level, where all players are so close in skill, character plays a bigger role. Sure, a great Ness main can easily overpower a mediocre MK main. But how about when those two players are so closely matched in skill? The edge would go to the better character. Not always, but definitely an edge.
At the same time, though, there's that one dude that apparently rocks the competitive scene with Yoshi, and another who does the same with Pikachu. Not that I've ever actually watched a tournament match with those two.
Note that Pikachu isn't that far from top tier. One Pikachu making it to the top 8 of some tournament is to be expected. Yoshi is more of an anomaly, but notice that he still isn't considered to be that good. One top player deciding to take him as far as possible before losing doesn't mean the tiers aren't accurate. Characters ARE unbalanced.
No, but it does mean that a character might have more to them than you see at first glance. People legit thought Jigglypuff was terrible for a long time. One guy kicks arse with Yoshi amidst a sea of Sheiks, Foxes, Falcos, and Marths. That says something, I think. I'm not even trying to argue that characters aren't unbalanced, just that if you get really freakin' good you can beat even high-level players using top-tier characters without using a high-tier character yourself.
I think you're getting off point. Remember that the post I was refuting in the first place rejected the idea that balance matters at all. Even though it's theoretically possible to beat a high level player with a low tier character, you'd still be handicapping yourself to attempt it.
I like swimming (maybe replace the effect to Brawl floatiness as someone mentioned?) instead of just falling through water for no reason, but.... 5 star post.
Just lock it if an issue arises. There is zero need to say that now.
A new experience is nice, but rather than outright removal, wouldn't it be better to alter them (tripping being an exception)?
It's not really an issue of talent. That is a LOT of dev and balance time to dedicate to a mechanic that affects only 2 characters in a presumably 50~ character roster. Considering that, unlike the modeling team, the programmers are probably fixing bugs and doing small character balances up to the last minute, they probably don't have the most free time.
Swimming added nothing to the gameplay in the grand scheme of things. Transformations were causing loading issues. Let's not forget that the game and the community generally refers to the transformation characters as separate entities. Transformations are also a balancing nightmare as you have to balance them not only against the other characters but with respect to the other transformation(s).
That's not always doable. Balance may dictate that you can't implement certain things. Mario and Luigi with the ability to spam out three fireballs at once would be frightening. Ness with his power at the end of Earthbound would be stupid. The list goes on.
Wall cling and wall jump are two different things.
Obviously I didn't mean to 100%.
You're right, of course, but I'm only trying to suggest that you may not be handicapping yourself as much as you seem to think. I'd say a character reaches the level of "usability" while still being underused if they have enough viable strategic options to be able to pull out a new one once the opponent figures out how the previous one works. (And if they're underused, it's not unlikely that the opponent will have to "figure out" every character-specific approach tactic you pull out.)
Balance in a game is not having every character in a game have 50/50 because that's hard to judge and as the meta advances the rating changes. It's more like not having any matchups worse than 70/30
I think that was part of my point. Good and bad matchups are not only something that will happen, but are somewhat important to the game. Although, it's worth noting that Street Fighter III: Third Strike is pretty unbalanced and there's almost no matchups worse than 70/30... It's just some characters have 70/30's on almost everyone. IDEALLY, a balanced character should have a similar number of good and bad matchups.
Hate to break it to you but just because they forgot to remove swim time from post-game stats in an alpha build created in january doesn't indicate the actual mechanic of swimming isn't cut, nor does it change the fact that in that same build characters fell through water like a anvil no differently than they would fall off stage in FD. It could very easily still count the time you spent in the water even when swimming isn't a thing if it was intended to be there.
