Sakurai essay in EDGE on appealing to all types of gamers with the new Smash Bros.
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The Great Gonzales
Member
Granted, not everyone is going to like everything about the new game. Some will still prefer Melee, for some 64 will be their favorite, etc. That's inevitable in any series. And it's fine to say, "I don't like this mechanic, I wished it worked more like it did in this previous game," but some of the reactions in this thread have been downright insane. Acting like the game is ruined and Sakurai is a shitty developer is taking these criticisms way farther than they need to be.
MvC3 and UMvC3 are broken as fuck.
All items all the time.
We don't know if for fun/for glory are stock or time yet but I think it's a pretty safe bet to say they're going to be time again with no choice.
Also for glory isn't even 1v1 100% of the time, it just says "1 on 1 battles possible" so you'll have to play FFA on that mode as well most likely.
People react the way they do because Smash is unique as a fighting game and as a game in general.
Sakurai seems more interested in changing the game than improving the game to me, and it's not as if we've got anywhere else to go to get our fix.
Aaronrules380
Member
Yeah, believe it or not, tons of people prefer Brawl to Melee, myself included. So yeah some people aren't going to be happy if it isn't melee 2.0. But you also can't just assume that there aren't people for whom the opposite isn't true as well. There are plenty of people who'd be upset by it becoming a clone of melee. It's just those people are for the most part not posting on forums and playing in tournaments, so their voice isn't really heard
Huge Succeeded
Banned
i can't stress it enough that people who are dissatisfied by Brawl aren't necessarily simply looking for a clone of Melee
I don't know. Some guy called Melee the "perfect formula" and wondered why anyone would deviate from it.
Maybe it's not what you want, but some people in here seem to want Melee with more characters every five years.
Sure, but PM's clone Falco is infinitely more interesting than Brawl Falco because his shine is back to being not worthless and he's a combo-lord again.
And I'm more than willing to give up a few voice-lines on Lucas in exchange for everything else PM gave him.
You can "deviate" from the formula without making your game incredibly boring and nearly inhospitable for competitive play. I know it was an early build, but if SSB4 ends up being anything like the E3 build I played it's going to be Brawl all over again (expect this time Nintendo probably isn't going to let anyone hack their game to fix it).
I'm no pro player, but why is it always played at the tournaments then?
balladofwindfishes
Member
It's not more interesting to me. Falco being different from Fox is more interesting. I don't even know what a shine is.
Your looking at Lucas as a move set and not a character. As a character, he's become bland and uninteresting in P:M. His moves are just generic "psychic stuff" rather than being from the Mother series, he lacks voice lines, making him eerily quiet, and overall he ends up with a unique move set, but sacrifices his character. And as a casual player, the character is more important than the move set.
Because people still play unbalanced games at tournaments.
Because there is no 'you have to be THIS balanced' standard for tournament games.
Do people prefer Brawl prefer it on a mechanical level though? or just because it has more content?
Aside from the speed, everything in Brawl seems like a major step down for anyone that wants to play the game at anything more than a superficial level.
Like, do you enjoy being able to trip? Do you enjoy not conserving momentum when you jump like in any good platformer? Do you enjoy being stuck in an animation when you hit the ground after an aerial when it isn't necessary? Do you enjoy it when the other person can instantly air dodge after you hit them and prevent you from performing a combo?
Some of these are problems with Brawl but everyone always ignores and says they prefer Brawl and bash mechanics like wave dashing or L-cancelling when we'd be just as happy if they were removed but the effects of them and the depth they provided were kept in.
Aside from the speed, everything in Brawl seems like a major step down for anyone that wants to play the game at anything more than a superficial level.
Like, do you enjoy being able to trip? Do you enjoy not conserving momentum when you jump like in any good platformer? Do you enjoy being stuck in an animation when you hit the ground after an aerial when it isn't necessary? Do you enjoy it when the other person can instantly air dodge after you hit them and prevent you from performing a combo?
Some of these are problems with Brawl but everyone always ignores and says they prefer Brawl and bash mechanics like wave dashing or L-cancelling when we'd be just as happy if they were removed but the effects of them and the depth they provided were kept in.
Well I was only posting that as a joke because the person I was responding to was being ridiculous. That said taking a game at face value is what a large amount of the audience are going to do so there needs to be basic and more complex outlets for things like this.
Also it's a pretty good article, that I did in fact read lol
Because its a big flashy game that people like to play. People seem to have a bit of a misconception that pro players only 'play' balanced games. No, they're just like everyone else and play games that they like to play.
Aaronrules380
Member
I'm not saying they all are. And I'm not saying Brawl is flawless either. But I can't help but feel that the hate brawl gets online is mostly the result of a massive case of group think where a few people's dissatisfaction combined with internet and the closed nature of some communities to escalate into a sort of irrational rage. Because there aren't anywhere near enough serious players to whom those changes really affect anything. And if you are a serious, tournament player who really can't enjoy the changes then that sucks. But people like that will always exist, and it's not like Melee is going to disappear or anything.
I like Smash more than other fighting games because I don't need to memorize a shit ton of manual inputs to be good. I can't combo in other fighting games, even when I practice a ton. I tried learning wavedashing in Melee and never got close before I got frustrated and quit. And in the age of the internet, stuff like this is far more important because when you're playing online, there will be other people who use this stuff. And it quite frankly isn't fun to constantly lose and have no idea what you're doing wrong because your opponents have been using some exploit that takes hours of practice to get down and is never once obvious in casual play.
chaosblade
Unconfirmed Member
I did, and you're completely reading my post wrong if you interpreted it as literally Melee with new characters.
Melee managed to be great for both the competitive community and everyone else. I mean, it was the best selling game on the GC with a 1/3 attach ratio! Sakurai doesn't want to do that again though, he feels like he has to dumb the game down so these people who don't even know a competitive community even exists can play at an ever-so-slightly closer level to those players.
And with that said, it's still suitable enough for pro play. I wished Mortal Kombat was as popular as Marvel or SF, but it never gained that traction due to multiple issues.
OmegaSmash
Member
Down B.The reflector move. Fox and Wolf keep it, but Falco throws it for no reason.
Unless the game does actual coin flips to decide actions irrelevant to your inputs, everything can be competitive.
Which is why tripping infuriates so many people
balladofwindfishes
Member
He throws it to be different from Fox and Wolf. How is that "no reason." Why didn't they balance around him throwing it instead of removing some of what made him unique?
Don't get me wrong, I love P:M, and think it's the definite version of Brawl, but I still disagree with some of their design choices.
Aaronrules380
Member
That's fine when those communities are pretty much completely isolated from each other in the age when local multiplayer was the order of the day. Can you really say it's the same with online play becoming the more prevalent mode of gaming? Especially when most of the things tournament players seem to love in Melee come from things that the majority of other players were never even aware existed?
Same reason they removed the FLUDD in favour of giving Mario his tornado back, the move was bad and it's only reason for being there was to be different to a previous iteration, it didn't add anything of use to his moveset whatsoever but removed a lot of the utility.
Tripping was very stupid. Some games are more viable for competition than others.
Oh, my bad then. It's just when you call something perfect then any change is inherently making the game worse. Apologies.
Then people who have no desire to use advanced tactics can play with items on, play with friends or both. Or Nintendo could make actual matchmaking which works well for literally every other competitive game out there.
So a character huge amount of combo-potential, a bunch of powerful normals, and the ability to kill on his Up-B is less interesting to you than a character that shoots his reflector to the side? That makes no sense to me.
And I might be wrong, but I thought the only cosmetic changes to Lucas' special moves they made were giving him the install on his neutral B and changing his side B to look like ice instead of fire. That hardly seems drastic enough to drain him of all his character.
I have fun with all of them.
Melee was great. Brawl was fun. I'm sure Sm4sh will be good as well.
I don't consider myself a tourney player, but I do appreciate a good 1-on-1 on Battlefield. I appreciate the speed of Melee, but that doesn't stop me for loving Brawl for what it is. It's different, that's for sure. Slower paced. But a chess match is as exciting as a race if you are invested in it.
I think some people should stop looking back at "the good ol' days" and look toward new experiences more positively. For instance, I loved Mortal Kombat II, but that did not stop me for liking UMK3 or MK9, despite all the radical differences between those itinerations of a fighting game series. In that genre, take any series you want and you will notice that each game will play differently while also having constant elements. They all remove and implement stuff with each new game : combo breakers, EX specials, parries, focus attacks, dial-a-combo, crossover attacks, super cancelling...
For Smash, I think the important constant elements are its ease of access, freeflow form of fighting and unique victory conditions. And so long as it keeps that as it core, I will find a Smash game to be an interesting experience to be had.
Melee was great. Brawl was fun. I'm sure Sm4sh will be good as well.
I don't consider myself a tourney player, but I do appreciate a good 1-on-1 on Battlefield. I appreciate the speed of Melee, but that doesn't stop me for loving Brawl for what it is. It's different, that's for sure. Slower paced. But a chess match is as exciting as a race if you are invested in it.
I think some people should stop looking back at "the good ol' days" and look toward new experiences more positively. For instance, I loved Mortal Kombat II, but that did not stop me for liking UMK3 or MK9, despite all the radical differences between those itinerations of a fighting game series. In that genre, take any series you want and you will notice that each game will play differently while also having constant elements. They all remove and implement stuff with each new game : combo breakers, EX specials, parries, focus attacks, dial-a-combo, crossover attacks, super cancelling...
For Smash, I think the important constant elements are its ease of access, freeflow form of fighting and unique victory conditions. And so long as it keeps that as it core, I will find a Smash game to be an interesting experience to be had.
Literally anything is suitable enough for pro play. User base is pretty much the only factor. That's why you see stuff like Marvel at Evo but not something like VF5.
Aaronrules380
Member
I've played fighting games with matchmaking, and that really only works after a bunch of matches by which point many people have already given up. And I'm tired of people acting like nobody ever got intimated by melee, because those people exist. I've met them.
DryEyeRelief
Member
Superficial reasons. Arcades don't exist anymore, so a player base must be created from people in their homes. So the games that get the most play are the ones with the most spectator appeal.
This analogy would work if Melee was chess and Brawl was chess but everything was a pawn.
Speed wasn't Brawl's problem, and I'm not sure this can ever be reiterated enough for people to get the idea.
Ragingnight
Member
technique will always be developed by the players. Its shitty on the dev to shut down innovation that isn't gamebreaking.
Its like if capcom shut down combos in SF2 because combos were unintended and a side affect of lenient input.
edit
Balance games =/= good competitive games.
Every fighting game is unbalanced to an extent. MvC3 is more balanced among the top tier and high tier, and those that sit there is a pretty decent amount. Its "broken" in the sense that the game is figured out and people know ToD combos and optimal hit confirms where any hit can lead to a death. Then you have to eat an ambiguous mixup that is usually multi-layered. The only thing "un-competitive" about mvc3 really is the TAC system. Everything else is fair in the context of almost everybody has the same tools
Who is getting intimidated by Melee?
That game sold a ton of copies for a reason. If you're a total scrub and don't give a shit about competitive play it functions as a party game as well as any of the previous Smash Brothers games. Sure, if a beginner plays against someone who plays seriously they're going to get 4-stocked every single time, but that's true of almost every single fighting game.
The Great Gonzales
Member
Speaking for myself...
-Tripping was a mixed bag. It can mess you up, but it can also save your life. Many times, I've been about to walk right into a deathblow, when a fortuitous trip let me slide underneath it. I like that kind of randomness, and while I'm not exactly sorry to see tripping go, I didn't think it was a huge problem in Brawl. I got used to it quickly enough.
-I honestly never noticed momentum conservation until I heard people here talking about it, so it clearly didn't detract too much from the experience. Whether it's in or out is a matter of indifference to me.
-Landing lag just means you have to be more judicious about using aerials. If you know you're going to get stuck on the ground after a move, you have to take extra care to make sure the attack will actually connect so you aren't left vulnerable. And, of course, it's always nice for you when the other guy is stuck pulling his sword out of the ground.
-Brawl's air dodges are a godsend, precisely because they allow you to slip out of combos and keep fighting (if there's one thing I hate in fighting games, it's getting trapped in marathon combos. It's absolutely miserable.) And it's not like Brawl's air dodges make you totally invincible - there's a definite period between air dodges when a person is vulnerable.
Ragingnight
Member
What you don't like having consequences for making a mistake?
Huge Succeeded
Banned
no. you are often still vulnerable even if the attack connects - or you simply can't follow up meaningfully - because of Brawl's intense landing lag and lack of cancelling options. It's one of the things that hampers nearly every character's offensive abilities. In fact I'd say it was one of the top 5 most limiting design decisions in Brawl.
And I don't really care what you think Brawl's problem is. Brawl is slower paced. Brawl is interesting for what it is. Melee is interesting for what it is. I had fun with both, and barring a meteor shower on my town, I will have fun with Sm4sh. That's the TL
R version of what I said. Don't know why you are trying to turn what I said to be about speed when it clearly isn't.
EDIT : Essentially, what I said is "Activity X is as exciting as TOTALLY UNRELATED ACTIVITY Y if you are invested in it". Feel free to substitute that into my earlier post if it helps you read it.
You can't dodge out of "combos." If a Falco is laser-locking you or a DeDeDe is chain-grabbing you, you're dead until they screw up.
And you're missing the point about extra landing lag. The fact that you "have to be more judicious about using aerials" is the problem. Removing an entire avenue of offense slows the game down and adds nothing in return.
And I don't really care what you think Brawl's problem is. Brawl is slower paced. Brawl is interesting for what it is. Melee is interesting for what it is. I had fun with both, and barring a meteor shower on my town, I will have fun with Sm4sh. That's the TL
Don't know why you are trying to turn what I said to be about speed when it clearly isn't.
EDIT : Essentially, what I said is "Activity X is as exciting as TOTALLY UNRELATED ACTIVITY Y if you are invested in it". Feel free to substitute that into my earlier post if it helps you read it.
Yeah, but that's a completely meaningless statement. No shit, If you're invested in anything it can be exciting, people collect stamps after all. People get excited at Brawl, it's still objectively worse than Melee in every measurable way for people who are interested in actually playing the game.
EDIT: Whoops that's not the EDIT button.
The OG Smash on Nintendo 64 is still my favorite entry in the series. I had Melee and played it quite a bit, but it really never "clicked" for me, and while I had fun with Brawl, I never had enough local people who wanted to play it regularly and the online was...well we all know how the online was.
Maybe I'm just way too casual of a Smash player to be deserving of a game that I'd like and everybody can roast me for it, but for my purposes I'm more than happy for Sakurai to make the game simple. I didn't even like in Melee when chargable smash attacks and midair dodges were added to the formula, let alone getting into the advanced shit that "competitive" players like to bring up with dash-dancing, crouch cancelling, and the like. I don't believe it's a game meant to be broken down to the minutiae in the way that something like Street Fighter is, but that's what the competitive community wants to do with it, and then criticize it for.
I can't help but feel like the people who are calling the game "garbage" already are taking both the game and themselves far too seriously. Is it really such a huge deal whether Smash 4 is played at EVO? Is enjoyment of the game so completely impossible without replicating Melee's feel exactly? It boggles my mind a little how some translated comments in a magazine can set people's tempers burning so highly.
Maybe I'm just way too casual of a Smash player to be deserving of a game that I'd like and everybody can roast me for it, but for my purposes I'm more than happy for Sakurai to make the game simple. I didn't even like in Melee when chargable smash attacks and midair dodges were added to the formula, let alone getting into the advanced shit that "competitive" players like to bring up with dash-dancing, crouch cancelling, and the like. I don't believe it's a game meant to be broken down to the minutiae in the way that something like Street Fighter is, but that's what the competitive community wants to do with it, and then criticize it for.
I can't help but feel like the people who are calling the game "garbage" already are taking both the game and themselves far too seriously. Is it really such a huge deal whether Smash 4 is played at EVO? Is enjoyment of the game so completely impossible without replicating Melee's feel exactly? It boggles my mind a little how some translated comments in a magazine can set people's tempers burning so highly.
The Great Gonzales
Member
Yes, but if your opponent gets knocked away, you have significantly more time to get back on your feet. Besides, I don't see the fact that your opponent has more of a chance to get a shot in at you after you hit him to necessarily be a bad thing.
That's an absurdly uncharitable reading of what I said. I've no objection to taking a few licks after making a mistake. What I don't like is being trapped in an endless barrage of attacks.
Aaronrules380
Member
1st you can sell a lot of copies and then people can stop playing quickly after they've bought a copy. And yes, I've had friends who weren't really gamers try to play melee and then get frustrated by it really quickly.
And honestly, I think what Sakurai wants isn't so much to get rid of competitive smash, but make it less of this exclusive thing that you can only get into after hours of reading about stuff online and practicing obscure exploits. The best player will usually win and practice is still important, but I don't think you should need to go through as many hoops as you did in Melee to even consider playing competitively. Especially now that online is a huge thing and people are going to want to play with friends from gaming forums and the like.
It's dumb to say Brawl can't be played competitively, because as pointed out, ANYTHING can be done competitively if people want to. I feel Sakurai is much better off trying to make the majority of smash fans as happy as possible even at the expense of a small minority, than trying to please everyone. It sucks for the people who truly can't enjoy the new game (And I still feel that a lot of brawl hate comes from guys parroting popular sentiments without actually understanding anything themselves) or adapt. But they can always play Melee, or even project M. Nobody is forcing you guys to switch anyways
-Tripping wasn't the biggest problem in Brawl, I only put it in there because it was more known to casual players. But the fact that it's something you're indifferent to but negatively affects higher levels of play means it's something that shouldn't be there, no? It completely takes control away from the player for no reason whatsoever, I wouldn't say that's good game design personally.
-Again, indifference to a mechanic that actively made certain characters in the game worse at a higher level.
-Landing lag isn't mainly about the first aerial you land, it lets you extend combos which are where a lot of the depth in smash comes from. I would go into how it massively over emphasizes the game being defensive but that has more to do with how shields worked so I didn't mention it.
-Alright, this one is the big one I don't understand. Since when has smash ever had marathon combos, except from in smash 64? The Smash series gives you plenty of opportunity to get out of combos with every single hit by using SDI, DI and teching properly, the period between air dodges is also very tiny and they're quite powerful with certain characters when played at a high level. But the game actually having a combo system adds so many meaningful choices to the game that I'm baffled that you can enjoy the "let's constantly poke each other to death" style in Brawl because it makes each individual attack matter less, it means you don't need to worry about getting punished for just throwing a move out (which you were apparently against earlier) or bad positioning because at most you're just going to eat a minor amount of damage and then air dodge out of it rather than actually be at a real deficit in damage, stock or positioning.
That's probably why you'll never understand why so many people dislike Brawl.
Losing all your offensive momentum because your character needs to go through a canned, uncancelable landing animation after every aerial stinks.
Brawl was actually a million times worse with infinities than Melee (Ice Climbers anyone). I know you never experienced them so I don't fault you for placing small combos as a casual plus.
OmegaSmash
Member
Tripping saving you some times doesn't make it a good mechanic. It just means that it helped you in those instances, and ruined it for your opponent. I'm always surprised whenever someone tries to downplay how bad of a mechanic tripping is. It may not be common, but that doesn't mean that it's not awful.
Landing lag is important to help punish players for their mistakes, but having no real way to cancel out the lag means that some aerials will be used less than others, and in Brawl's case, aerials with auto cancel properties will always be used more than those without. I do agree that L Cancel shouldn't be in Smash in the way that Melee does it, but it's a mechanic that's still important to the game.
You have DI to help you escape combos. One of the main problems with Brawl's airdodge was that it was simply too good of an option. It let you get out of hitstun and make combos even more useless, it could negate your momentum while being thrown out of the stage, and could be spammed easily on top of all of that.
Aaronrules380
Member
And see, this is condescending bullshit. Melee is not objectively better. And saying anyone who prefers Brawl does so for superficial reasons is really condescending. So I'll put it this way: After playing Brawl, I found less enjoyment in Melee, even when using the exact same character between both games
Did they get frustrated with the game (which makes no sense to me because on a surface level it controls identically to every other Smash game) or did they get frustrated because they lost to someone better than them over and over again and didn't have tripping or move-deterioration to help them steal wins?
And you're right that anything can be played competitively, but considering Melee was one of the most popular games at EVO this year and vanilla Brawl is basically never played anywhere now, there's something to be said for making sure your game is actually fun to play seriously.
Holy Order Sol
Member
Well getting punished for a successful hit is generally absurd. Discourages you from attacking in the first place.