The Gravity of the Situation: Gravity and Minus 4.0b

[Pin Clock]

When Brawl Minus 4.0b came out, the change in gravity was a rather controversial change added.

Unfortunately, it messed with a few characters in ways that weren't detected before release, such as Ganondorf and Snake, and some view it as messing with the overall feel of the game, or changing Minus into what its not.

It was implemented not only to compensate for the reduced hitstun, but also to speed up the overall pace of the game. Everyone falls a little faster, which not only helps with "when will I touch the ground. C'mon, when.", but also helps air to ground transition, improving air to ground combos as well.

What are your thoughts on the Gravity in 4.0b and the impact it has on the game, and what changes would you like to see to it, if any, in the full release of Brawl Minus 4.0?

 

[Mavi]

Feels pretty gross right now. If everyone's jump heights were compensated and whatever move-specific issues it created were addressed it might be alright, but the gravity change was a huge, immediate turnoff when I first tried 4.0b and that hasn't really changed with more playtime.

I'm okay with the air game feeling like Brawl. That's not an inherently bad thing, just different.

 

[Thor]

Old gravity was one of the few reasons I truly enjoyed Minus... I got to play most of the castas if it was Brawl but better, and I got into Brawl late enough to where tournaments basically weren'the happening when I wanted to go to one. Combo games in this game are nuts, and zero-deaths would be plenty possible even in lower gravity, the only victim being some throws (most of which could possibly be compensated on their own, I'd think).

I definitely want a full reversion of the gravity.

 

[Neville]

Back before the gravity change Minus was Brawl. Brawl with more hitstun and wacky moves, sure, but it still felt like Brawl. With the new gravity, Minus feels like it's own Smash game, and the gravity works well with the new hitstun, making the combos you get feeling less like easy mode, and more rewarding, allowing you to set up for stage control and edgeguards. These bring out situations where players with the most skill thrive, rather than rewarding players who get combo starters. While the gravity does has kinks to work out, such as Lucario still feeling waaay to floaty (he should still be floaty, but not to the extent that he is), jump heights need to be edited, as well as some move knockback angles, the dev team did a good job and I would really like the change to stay.

 

[Mawootad]

I honestly think that the perceived changes due to gravity are overwhelmingly placebo effect and that while there are a (very) small handful of things that can be directly attributable to the changes basically everything is at a smaller difference than can actually be directly felt. I'm largely of the opinion that if gravity changes weren't documented there would just be a couple of minor bug reports and not "woah the gravity is different".

 

[Gold_TSG]

I honestly think that the perceived changes due to gravity are overwhelmingly placebo effect and that while there are a (very) small handful of things that can be directly attributable to the changes basically everything is at a smaller difference than can actually be directly felt. I'm largely of the opinion that if gravity changes weren't documented there would just be a couple of minor bug reports and not "woah the gravity is different".

Placebo and actual changes are two different things. Altering gravity did in fact change quite a bit in Minus, regardless of how small you may think they are. It isn't placebo when more than a small amount of people are experiencing the same issues. They aren't thinking something is different without knowing what (like smash 4), they were told about gravity, and are feeling legit effects from it.

I am of the opinion that it is better that they not be happy with something they know was changed, rather than be unhappy with something that wasn't even touched and assume it was (Snake).

 

[Macarenaman]

Reasons I loved Brawl Minus so much more than Project M were both that it was crazier, yet that it still seemed to build a bit on the game it's on, instead of building a new game altogether.
I have nothing against brawl, and want to play a crazy modded Brawl, not a new smash game.

Had to make a new account on this forum just to vote on this.

 

[Valravn]

I like the new gravity. In previous versions, it felt like a lot of combos were based around putting someone into hitstun and following them around instead of having gravity do some of the work and the combo-er using it as a tool.

I also agree that the changes to gravity were minimal, and the hitstun decrease is far more notable. I don't think one should have happened without the other, so if gravity does get decreased again, hitstun should probably increase to match as well.

 

[Mohl]

I'm loving the gravity and hitstun changes. It lets me get a couple more combos that I couldn't before because they'd be too high up for me to continue a combo.

 

[Doqtor Kirby]

OH YES! FINALLY A TIME TO PUT UP MY WALL OF PAIN TEXT!

I'm one of the few people that is strongly against both the gravity AND hitstun changes. Since I know for a fact the hitstun changes are likely going to be permanent (and there's no place for it), I won't bring up hitstun here. But I am going to go in depth on why the gravity change is not for this game, as I haven't quite gone into this much depth on the subject, instead using quick john responses such as "it made ganon bad".

1. It changes the game.
Wow. Very generic statement. Read me out on this one, this one's gonna be good. The gravity was changed on a global level. This means everybody falls faster. This means every character has been changed without even TOUCHING the characters. Every matchup has been changed because we added 10% more gravity to the game.

2. It affects certain characters more.
Like fastfallers and heavies. Here's an example.
Jigglypuff has a PSA weight of 54 (arbitrary, can't actually look it up), at 1.0x gravity that weight is still 54.
Ganondorf has a PSA weight of 84 (again arbitrary), at 1.0x gravity it's still 84.
The difference between the weights is 30.
Jigglypuff has a PSA weight of 54, at 1.1x gravity that weight is 59.4; a 5.4 unit difference.
Ganondorf has a PSA weight of 84, at 1.1x gravity that weight is 92.4; an 8.4 unit difference.
The difference between the weights is 33.
Ganondorf's weight is affected 64.3% more that Jigglypuff's, with respect to their PSA weights.
The same can be applied to fastfallers as well, since we've increased the global falling speed by 10% as well.

3. This causes all players to have to relearn their characters.
Because of these global changes, all players now have to be re-accustomed to their characters because everybody falls faster. Unless that was intended, that causes a stall and resurgence of the metagame.

4. It feels closer to PM than Brawl.
Now I'm going to offend literally everybody by this statement. Project M has characters that fall obscenely fast. When I play b [4.0b], I get that same obscene fast fall feel. It's not as close to PM as I make it out to be, but it does give that PM feel.

I'm probably not going anywhere with this and I will most definitely not reach my goal (reverting both gravity and hitstun and keeping it set in stone forever).

-----

Also if Gravity Taunt gets removed I will throw a table at the devteam. Yes even at myself.

 

[Neville]

Doqk, Weight has nothing to do with fall speed.

 

[Doqtor Kirby]

Doqk, Weight has nothing to do with fall speed.

I don't know if it was documented/mentioned in my post, but both weight gravity and fallspeed were increased 10%

Gravity increased (x1.0->x1.1)
Global Max Fall Speed increased (x1.0-x1.1)
Global Max Fast Fall Speed increased (x1.0-x1.1)

 

[Valravn]

I think I remember Pin saying that was in error when the matter was brought up previously, but I can't substantiate that.

I don't think I've had to 're-learn' any characters significantly. I have to try harder to short hop dair with Ganon, but he still does the same stuff as before. (The tilt reversion was very welcome.)

 

[Pin Clock]

Weight and Fall Speed are two unrelated beasts. Pichu is relatively light but falls fairly fast. When character's weights are adjusted their fallspeeds are not effected.

 

[Sammi-husky]

I would like to point out that while technically faster falling feels more like PM, minus' fall speed and floatieness was more than even smash 4. Doesn't that mean smash 4 feels even more like PM? Sm4sh gravity is still a bit higher than minus.

Also, while certain chars were affected more than others, the entire point of the beta was to find and fix these. The point of the gravity changes were not to change combos AT ALL. And from the extensive testing i've done literally every day since weeks before beta even released, i've found almost no combos significantly affected by it. Yes, some were, i know. That's the whole point of this beta. We wanted to make the gameplay faster. This was essential to that, and it also helped alleviated the hitstun changes, making it so there is close to no change in combo potential.

Nobody should have to relearn they're character. No combos should change. If they have, just let us know the problems and we will fix them. If you feel like the character has significantly changed, let us know and we will try to fix them. I absolutely don't want to have people feel the need to play differently because of this change. But i do feel that the game should be sped up, and i do feel that the game being (at least as floaty as it was) is bad. Maybe we can lower the gravity a little bit, but i really really don't think it's a good idea to revert the gravity changes in their entirety.

Please, don't make your decisions based on how fond you were of how the game used to be. Don't vote for reversions just because you don't want things to change. Make your decisions based on what you think would be better for the game as a whole, how the game was in its past put aside. How would you all speed up the game? Minus is already full of incredible movement options and people are pretty fast on the ground....it's air to ground transitions that feel unnatural. The ground speed is so fast in minus, bein slow in the air just feels weird.

 

[Sammi-husky]

I don't know if it was documented/mentioned in my post, but both weight and fallspeed were increased 10%

Not weights, no. It was gravity and fallspeeds. Weight is a very different

 

[Thor]

I would like to point out that while technically faster falling feels more like PM, minus' fall speed and floatieness was more than even smash 4. Doesn't that mean smash 4 feels even more like PM? Sm4sh gravity is still a bit higher than minus.

Also, while certain chars were affected more than others, the entire point of the beta was to find and fix these. The point of the gravity changes were not to change combos AT ALL. And from the extensive testing i've done literally every day since weeks before beta even released, i've found almost no combos significantly affected by it. Yes, some were, i know. That's the whole point of this beta. We wanted to make the gameplay faster. This was essential to that, and it also helped alleviated the hitstun changes, making it so there is close to no change in combo potential.

Nobody should have to relearn they're character. No combos should change. If they have, just let us know the problems and we will fix them. If you feel like the character has significantly changed, let us know and we will try to fix them. I absolutely don't want to have people feel the need to play differently because of this change. But i do feel that the game should be sped up, and i do feel that the game being (at least as floaty as it was) is bad. Maybe we can lower the gravity a little bit, but i really really don't think it's a good idea to revert the gravity changes in their entirety.

Please, don't make your decisions based on how fond you were of how the game used to be. Don't vote for reversions just because you don't want things to change. Make your decisions based on what you think would be better for the game as a whole, how the game was in its past put aside. How would you all speed up the game? Minus is already full of incredible movement options and people are pretty fast on the ground....it's air to ground transitions that feel unnatural. The ground speed is so fast in minus, bein slow in the air just feels weird.

I've said it before, will say it again, will probably be discarded [again]:

One of the things that separated Minus from other mods and smash games was that it retained a crazy combo game without high gravity. In increasing the gravity, Minus is being homogenized with other games.

Also, I don't think hitstun needs to be reverted if gravity is... combos are crazy easy in new hitstun even if people are floatier. Grabs may need alteration, but zero-deaths would still be plenty possible, and it would cause more player-player interaction with DI mixups/etc.

Also, floaty Lucario, floaty Samus, and floaty Luigi, now possessing actual combo games, were quite possibly THE biggest draw into Minus [in retrospect, alongside Falco's epic Firebird quote that was deleted because some can't handle his swa- er, found it annoying]. Despite the name, Minus frankly doesn't feel like Minus anymore... it's more like some Smash4/PM wannabe that's fun, but doesn't appeal to me nearly as much over either of those games, probably because there's also some really, REALLY dumb things in this build [MK's dair is the easy example, but there are a few other things].

Spoiler: For Pin Clock and whomever is interested

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR MAKING A POLL ON THIS!!!

 

[Valravn]

I don't think Minus feels the same as other smash games. It's very different from PM, at least.

combos are crazy easy in new hitstun even if people are floatier.

They were easier before. Once you landed a solid hit on someone, many characters could just follow them to a blast zone without them ever entering tumble. Especially Falcon and Lucario. I think the game was balanced in that state, since both players have equal opportunities to initiate a kill string, but I prefer the current state because it requires a little bit more effort.

Lucario still has combos, too. I'll make some gfys tomorrow after work. The hyperbole I see in this thread about a 10% change of gravity is absurd.

I don't understand what's wrong with Meta Knight's Dair.

 

[Thor]

I don't think Minus feels the same as other smash games. It's very different from PM, at least.


They were easier before. Once you landed a solid hit on someone, many characters could just follow them to a blast zone without them ever entering tumble. Especially Falcon and Lucario. I think the game was balanced in that state, since both players have equal opportunities to initiate a kill string, but I prefer the current state because it requires a little bit more effort.

Lucario still has combos, too. I'll make some gfys tomorrow after work. The hyperbole I see in this thread about a 10% change of gravity is absurd.

I don't understand what's wrong with Meta Knight's Dair.

Meta Knight's dair combos into itself offstage and frame-traps airdodges... your options are to meteor cancel, get dair'd again and die, not meteor cancel and die, or try to do some super late meteor cancel... where he still probably kills you. If you try immediate meteor cancel airdodge and he reads the immediate meteor cancel and does a dair accordingly, dair has low enough lag that he just does another one and usually hits the endlag of the airdodge, killing you anyway. You can try a double jump aerial with your meteor cancel, but if he tipper dairs this often won't reach, and furthermore, you gain no height doing this [as most of the cast], often leaving you dead anyway.

His dair offstage can outright kill much of the cast from 0, and is utterly devastating for Falcon, Ganondorf, Fox, Falco, Luigi, Jigglypuff, and more, while still very easily gimping nearly the entire cast on its own.

On top of all this, the move combos into fsmash [or whatever you want! *percentage dependent] onstage - frankly, this doesn't bother me, but when you stack it on top of everything else, it means dair is nearly always his best option, and a tool most of the cast is even more unable to deal with than MAX Lucario counter [or ROB's good ol' multilaser]. Yoshi and Lucario are two of the very few characters who have legitimate ways around this move even when used at moderately high percents, but again, they are the few.

My point of the post you quoted wasn't "Combos are easier now", it was "Combos are so easy they would still be extremely easy if hitstun was lowered and gravity was left unaltered". I think combos are arguably marginally harder, but that might also just be some characters being more awkward or missing some tools [*weeps over the dead corpse that is 4 hits of Snake's nair*].

 

[Gold_TSG]

I still don't see the need for true combo strings. It's too easy and doesn't feel rewarding.

I played a lot of Smash 4 over the course of the night. Dorf, Ike, Rob... My usual guys to go to when I wanna have the most fun. These matches weren't against typical FG noobs and tryhards. This was against an old rival of mine from back in Brawl, someone who is legitimately skilled, much like myself. We played a lot of three for alls with one of his friends, and they were pretty hectic. Sure, I'm not fantastic outside of one on one, but I managed. I kept having too hard a time as Dorf, unable to net kills because of his lack of speed or options to deal with projectile users, so I opted for Rob.
I was pulling off strings, combos, snipes, and glorious meteors left and right, essentially destroying both of them, even doing so without losing a stock. It felt incredibly rewarding being able to earn every one of those stocks because I was able to make the right calls where it mattered to keep those strings going, and with a character that isn't designed heavily for comboing outside of throws.
That is where I find the fun in Smash Bros. I feel that rush as each hit connects, extending my string longer and longer, either putting them into kill percentages or flat out taking the stock. I don't play for combos that simply go on and on until someone makes a mistake, or they fall out from the high percents, or they just get 0-death'd. I play for that rush, hoping my next hit will land, hoping I made the right prediction on my opponent.

Of course, this isn't for everyone, as there are those out there who don't seek to improve their skills to reach for the same kinds of thrills that I do. Regardless of that fact, what draws people to Minus, or rather, what has always drawn people to Minus, is the insanity in what the chars can put out. The less technical people out there don't care about numbers and frames. They want action. They want zany. They want "oh my god did you see that!?" Minus has already had that, but the more competitive side has seeped into its veins a little too much. When I was on the team, I wanted to stay true to the original vision, of what I grew to love about Minus over Pretend Melee. I wanted characters to have their unique traits, their new moves and abilities, and to retain that sense of what-the heck-just-happened?!, but in a more positive way. I only aimed to throw a sense of balance in there so it would be a bit more accessible to those who are not as skilled as myself or others on that level, so there is nothing that no player has access to in order to abuse to get that win if they spent the time mastering it.
I was the best DK in Minus before I quit, and I mastered everything about the character to the point where DK seemed to be able to overcome even his worst matchups. And why was that? Because he had everything, sans a reflector. Details aside, he is a combo monster, and in the right matchup, he can score no less than 60+% from the moment he grabs you, upwards of 80+% against certain chars. This is well into his KO range for a majority of his attacks. After a while, a lot of people complained about him when I used him, while some simply refused to fight him. Taking what I learned about him into Smash 4 has allowed me to see just how bad it was. All I wanted to see in Minus was fun that everyone could get into without the frustrations.

And that is my sleepy rant thingy. Take from it what you will.

 

[Macarenaman]

One of the things that separated Minus from other mods and smash games was that it retained a crazy combo game without high gravity. In increasing the gravity, Minus is being homogenized with other games.

I felt drawn to Minus for similar reasons. The really high hitstun helped too.

 

[Sammi-husky]

We pretty much agreed on grav changes long long before sm4sh came out (was announced?) but never got around to it. Again, if you think Minus doesn't have crazy combo game and ridiculous powerful moves, zany attacks, and insane gameplay characteristics just because the grav changes, then i don't know what to tell you. Minus still retains all of those things whether we remove the grav changes or not. The only thing removing the grav changes will do is make people feel better about minus "Not being true to Minus" which in reality has always been ours to define, and lazily fix some minor issues that we are going to fix before full release anyways. Not everyone's "Minus" definition is going to match up.

In reality the only thing the grav changes significantly alter about minus is it's speed. "It makes it not true to Minus" or "Makes it more like PM" isn't a reasonable argument against why making the game faster through similar methods (the only method left we have) is a bad idea. All i hear is "it's not like the minus i liked" or "It's trying to be what it's not" or "it's too much like other games". That's no excuse for not trying to make the game the best we can, and right now we want to speed up the game's pace. one of if not the only option left is too speed up grav.

That's my opinion, sorry if it doesn't match up with someone else's. But I still haven't heard anyone give us an alternative solution or compromise.

 

[Sammi-husky]

Minus will always retain what made Minus what it is. It will always be all the things you love. Crazy combos, insane speed, broken characters, zany combos, etc etc. But people have to open to SOME change as well.

 

[Thor]

We pretty much agreed on grav changes long long before sm4sh came out (was announced?) but never got around to it. Again, if you think Minus doesn't have crazy combo game and ridiculous powerful moves, zany attacks, and insane gameplay characteristics just because the grav changes, then i don't know what to tell you. Minus still retains all of those things whether we remove the grav changes or not. The only thing removing the grav changes will do is make people feel better about minus "Not being true to Minus" which in reality has always been ours to define, and lazily fix some minor issues that we are going to fix before full release anyways. Not everyone's "Minus" definition is going to match up.

In reality the only thing the grav changes significantly alter about minus is it's speed. "It makes it not true to Minus" or "Makes it more like PM" isn't a reasonable argument against why making the game faster through similar methods (the only method left we have) is a bad idea. All i hear is "it's not like the minus i liked" or "It's trying to be what it's not" or "it's too much like other games". That's no excuse for not trying to make the game the best we can, and right now we want to speed up the game's pace. one of if not the only option left is too speed up grav.

That's my opinion, sorry if it doesn't match up with someone else's. But I still haven't heard anyone give us an alternative solution or compromise.

... I'm saying I think how strong the combo game is should be toned down by removing the gravity change and leaving the hitstun change... Falcon has crazy stuff still regardless, but parts of the cast are just more awkward and you'll have to really mess with a lot of things that make the game a lot less natural for anyone transitioning to Minus from Brawl [or for some, Smash 4, ex: Pikachu]. I think zero-deaths would still be fairly easy, and long combos would still be rather simple, but it would force you to be a bit more interactive in how you combo them [unlike before where it was almost strictly prayer-based].

I'm also open to changing almost everything, but I really draw the line at fall speeds, because I want a game where my characters are actually floaty... like, I can get over Falco's reflector, I can [ultimately] get over Warlock Punch, even if I feel they're not good balance decisions, but fast-faller Samus? Even faster-falling-Ganondorf and the rest of the cast? For me, that crosses the line. To each their own though... *shrugs*

 

[Valravn]

Prayer based? Nothing in this game or many other fighting games is luck based. You either know how to follow up and read your opponent's mitigating movements, or you don't.

Samus is not a fast faller by any stretch of the imagination. I think you're wildly overestimating the magnitude of the gravity increase. I think it's important to remember that this is still a beta build. Ganondorf is very difficult to short hop with in this version, but that doesn't necessarily mean his fall speed needs changing; perhaps he just needs to short hop 10% higher. Little tweaks can fix all the problems while retaining the (in my opinion) hugely beneficial universal air speed increase.