Brawl Minus 4.0b is here!

Bent 00

Longtime Limit Breaker
Inhale -> Grab was too good, and Kirby should be more about Copy Abilities than just Inhale alone.

Those who are complaining about its removal, just wait until all the Copy Abilities get buffed.

I have a feeling most of them will be quite useful once the devs are done with them, so you won't miss Inhale's grab cancel too much.
 

Lucis Perficio

Radiant Hero of Blue Flames
FFAs are too casual a format to be worth balancing around. If something is insanely ridiculously overpowered in FFA to the extent that it makes games not fun to play and we can fix that without significantly affecting 1v1 we'll make changes with FFA in mind, but otherwise skill differences are so large and so varied that most changes mean absolutely nothing in the end.

My point is that in FFA, skill difference doesn't matter when selecting certain characters.

Pick Ganondorf or Bowser and you should have a pretty easy time in FFA by spaming uTilt or Bowser's B moves. Same goes for Olimar: rapidly tap b, rapidly tap side-b, runaway, re-group Pikmin, repeat.
 

Lucis Perficio

Radiant Hero of Blue Flames
That's sorta how Minus works now... if it's broken, remove it and replace it with something less stupid. RIP 50% Firefox, Falco's reflector, Warlock Punch, ROB's nair, and so many more victims...
I thought the point of Minus was to make things MORE broken or stupid for characters, for the sake of balancing them.
 

Lucis Perficio

Radiant Hero of Blue Flames
Also I like the new Hybrid Samus, although I'm a little disappointed that she's got the same issues now as characters like Ganondorf, Bowser, and Olimar.

She can spam side-b and down b across stage, and protect herself from above with an easy up-b.

She's become a super-zoning character, and her combos see less emphasis. My main issue is that players can literally stall using 3/4 specials, and kill with them inconspicuously as well.
 

Mawootad

Minus Backroom
I thought the point of Minus was to make things MORE broken or stupid for characters, for the sake of balancing them.
The most effecient and effective method of balancing is using both buffs and nerfs. Breaking things to get to a balanced state is more defining a new power budget that everyone gets to have and building characters towards that to reach a new balanced state than it means buff everything forever until the game balances itself out because instead of balanced and interesting gameplay that gives you everyone does everything.

Also I like the new Hybrid Samus, although I'm a little disappointed that she's got the same issues now as characters like Ganondorf, Bowser, and Olimar.

She can spam side-b and down b across stage, and protect herself from above with an easy up-b.

She's become a super-zoning character, and her combos see less emphasis. My main issue is that players can literally stall using 3/4 specials, and kill with them inconspicuously as well.
Samus as a fighter should be all about zoning with projectile spam, so that's basically Samus working as intended.
 

Gold_TSG

Can't stop The Dorf Train.
Lucis, please use the Edit button when you want to add more information to your posts if no one else has posted yet. There's to need to post 3 times in a row.

And Dorf isn't broken in FFA any more than anyone else. His utilt is very easy to see coming and to avoid. If he were to spam it, he would become the target and be teamed up on very quickly. Skill is rarely involved in FFA because it's supposed to be hectic and chaotic. There is literally no way to balance around that.
 

Kien

A Meaningless Circle
Minus Backroom
Also I like the new Hybrid Samus, although I'm a little disappointed that she's got the same issues now as characters like Ganondorf, Bowser, and Olimar.

She can spam side-b and down b across stage, and protect herself from above with an easy up-b.

She's become a super-zoning character, and her combos see less emphasis. My main issue is that players can literally stall using 3/4 specials, and kill with them inconspicuously as well.

My design intention around her was that her projectile game would be used aggressively, not so much defensively. Each of them add immensely to her pressure game and should they hit, will make openings by sending opponents vertically. This is supposed to be something that she combos out of. (Missiles, Super Missiles, Charge shot) While Bombs, Screw Attack, and Full Charge Shot is something she's supposed to combo into as finishers. Her smashes are still viable options, but physical combat isn't her best way of racking up damage.
 

Lucis Perficio

Radiant Hero of Blue Flames
Lucis, please use the Edit button when you want to add more information to your posts if no one else has posted yet. There's to need to post 3 times in a row.

And Dorf isn't broken in FFA any more than anyone else. His utilt is very easy to see coming and to avoid. If he were to spam it, he would become the target and be teamed up on very quickly. Skill is rarely involved in FFA because it's supposed to be hectic and chaotic. There is literally no way to balance around that.

My bad, I didn't notice how close together the posts were.

As for Ganondorf. It's hard for three people to see the move coming when they're all fighting each other, or in the case that the game splits into two 2v2s, two others will be doomed to gain 20% via Ganon. I'd say it's wildly more broken than anyone else because it hits THE ENTIRE STAGE. Play in Hyrule Temple and you're FINISHED (but that's just one example).

Skill is ABSOLUTELY involved in FFA considering that I've developed enough skill in my friend group for people to want to DT or even TT me simply because it would be the only way someone else has a chance to win. I've even taken to fighting a team of at least 2 CPUs when playing AI because they're garbage otherwise (literally 3-4 stocking them consistently). In doing so I see that certain characters do much better in FFA than others. My mains, Ike, Ganondorf, and Bowser have little to no trouble two-stocking or even three-stocking two CPUs with Team Attack off, but I digress.

My point is that FFA does require skill, such as when you're fighting one person in particular, and suddenly someone shoots their target, who dodges, so their projectile makes its way across stage. In this scenario, the two fighting on the other side of the stage could opt to ignore anything else for the sake of their combo which they've started. Though, if the character ignores the projectile and goes for the combo, they'll likely be hit, rather than allowing the projectile to hit their target by dodging it, and comboing with it as well.

A friend of mine has very good presence of mind in FFAs (he's recently joined our group of smashers) and has amazed me with how skilled he is in FFA. He and I are about equal in terms of skill level, and since he's come around our FFA matches consist of us trying to take each otherdown by hitting other characters toward another to start combos or to use as human shields.

ik FFA is intended to be chaotic, but that doesn't mean that it can't contain a realm of precision as well. In the case of items, you actually have a random number generator of sorts, in which case we see true chaos, as one can be charging an attack or whatever on a stunned target, and SUDDENLY a bomb spawns in your hitbox, killing you instead.

But in an item-less FFA, the numbers being generated aren't random. They depend entirely on the players involved and the decisions which they make. Whether they prefer to evade, attack, or mix it up plays a big role (I have a friend whose preferred method of winning is to evade excessively and trade combos for absolutely safe hits spaced throughout the match.
 

Bent 00

Longtime Limit Breaker
If Ganondorf's Up Tilt is too hard for people in FFAs to look out for, perhaps we could add a noticeable wind-up sound effect to it.

Personally, I think it's fine as-is -- it was never a problem when I played FFAs. Just don't ignore Ganondorf.
 

Momurderer

Bazooka Koopa
I absolutely love Ganon's up tilt. His lack of mobility/ predictable mobility make it a great tool for him. It's hard to see a lot of things coming in FFAs when stuff is getting really hectic.

Kirby's inhale cancel kinda took away from what made Kirby Kirby. Copying abilities and using them makes him a way more flexible fighter. Inhale cancel would make more sense on D3 than Kirby since D3's inhale is almost worthless, almost.

Sonic's Boost could do with a hitbox, it only makes sense, but how to implement it without making it absurd is the question. I just really don't like the cool down. No other move I can think of besides Wario's crate has a cool down. Just don't like the having to wait for no reason to use a move thing that's going on with Boost. I started a thread in Sonic's character section about Boost hoping to hear a lot of ideas and maybe come up with something better than a cool down. At first I didn't mind the idea of a cool down but after playing around for a bit with it I just don't like it. Yea Boost dancing was too broken to stay in the game but there has to be another way. I need to go fast but I can't.
 

Valravn

Well-Known Member
Balancing around FFA doesn't make much sense to me, though if something's really egregious and doesn't change up 1v1 too much there's no harm fixing things. Adding a windup sound to Ganon's up-tilt doesn't seem too strange.

One of the problems I take with boost-dancing is that it's dash-dancing if dash-dancing were made as stupid as possible, and dash-dancing is already really really stupid. While smash isn't a traditional fighting game by any stretch of the word, it can destroy a lot of low-tiers on its own (as well as numerous aspects of an MU being reduced to "dash-dance harder") and make even high tiers seem unviable...
Dash dancing is... stupid? It's not even good in Minus compared to Melee, and in Melee dash dancing practically is the game for some matchups. Maybe it's because you play 4 (where dash dancing isn't even a thing) but I think you wildly underestimate how important a good dash dance is to playing Melee.

gfycat.com/SmallBitesizedAmbushbug

PPMD is a ridiculously good player. He isn't mashing his stick back and forth, and he isn't just moving left and right in a mostly-actionable state like Boost allows for. Let's walk through what he did here once he hit the ground.

L cancel
Pivot
Short Wavedash back
Dash forward
Dash-pivot
Wavedash back
Wavedash back
STICKY WALK FORWARDS
Dash-pivot
Wavedash back
Forward smash

That's a ton of movement! He could shield at any point because he never entered run, despite moving around half the bottom platform. Even better, Marth's dash allows him to crouch very low.

imgur.com/aTlf7xW

Melee is all about the subtle movements, like how Marth's up tilt moves his hurtbubbles slightly forward, allowing him do things like this, where the lean forward prevents the Falcon grab.

gfycat.com/MiniatureWelldocumentedAiredale

But to return to the topic at hand, let's compare that to Sonic. Unlike Marth, Sonic is strongest when he's on top of you. Unlike Marth's melee movement, Boost has a very big, very static hurtbubble. Sonic can't win a match unless he touches you, so you always know he'll approach at some point. So yeah, he's fast, but he's big, obvious, and predictable. The only thing that saves this is his ability to not commit, which is much weaker in 4.0b than in 3.Q.

to see what I am talking about, go watch Armada vs PPMD winner's semis at APEX 2015. PPMD literally only loses game 3 with Marth because he made a mistake...
That's how high level Melee works. People lose to Armada all the time when they make a mistake, too. That's why you get situations like this.

gfycat.com/FoolishWeightyIzuthrush

....PPMD makes Armada's Peach look like a n00b-level Peach who thinks dash attack is the best move in the game and dsmash is a miracle from heaven.
PPMD might be the best player in the world. Anyone getting zero-to-deathed looks like a terrible player compared to the person hitting them.

Wizzrobe is one of the best Falcon players out there, and here he is whiffing a dash grab and getting pillared to death by Westballz. Leffen might be the best Fox nowadays, and here's Armada following his SDI with four parasol hits, amongst many other things, killing him.

Having more options doesn't mean the game is broken or unbalanced, it means you have to be better at the game to deal with those options. No matter how tricky someone gets, someone will be able to outplay them if they read the situation properly.

a I'm-even-harder-to-hit-than-Melee-Marth-and-Lightweight-Palutena-combined card [boost],
Unfortunately Minus doesn't have a debug mode, so I can't confirm this, but I'm pretty certain that Sonic is much taller than a dash dancing Marth. I don't know anything about Palutena. The main difference being that Sonic can't shield while boosting in the air, where I'm more likely to be boosting in the first place. (Boosting on the ground is asking for someone to throw a projectile at you in many matchups.) It's also a whole lot easier.

I actually just noticed that thread over in the Sonic forum. I'll redirect to there.
 

Gold_TSG

Can't stop The Dorf Train.
If you aren't paying attention to possibly the biggest threat in the game while in FFA, you aren't fighting them properly. Dorf's utilt takes a good bit to actually get the hit box out, and if you get hit by it, regardless of the situation, it's your fault for not paying him any mind. And if you get hit by it the first time, something should click and make you say "I shouldn't give him the space and freedom to use this move often." And considering its FFA, the other players should be thinking this too.
 

Valravn

Well-Known Member
FFA will always be balanced by the simple fact that everyone wants to hit the person in the lead. The game could be wildly unbalanced, and the 'weakest' character might still come out on top by playing patiently as the stocks wind down. Big characters tend to have big hitboxes, which are great for racking up kills. Big characters are also big targets. ;)
 

Thor

Well-Known Member
Dash dancing is... stupid? It's not even good in Minus compared to Melee, and in Melee dash dancing practically is the game for some matchups. Maybe it's because you play 4 (where dash dancing isn't even a thing) but I think you wildly underestimate how important a good dash dance is to playing Melee.

gfycat.com/SmallBitesizedAmbushbug

PPMD is a ridiculously good player. He isn't mashing his stick back and forth, and he isn't just moving left and right in a mostly-actionable state like Boost allows for. Let's walk through what he did here once he hit the ground.

L cancel
Pivot
Short Wavedash back
Dash forward
Dash-pivot
Wavedash back
Wavedash back
STICKY WALK FORWARDS
Dash-pivot
Wavedash back
Forward smash

That's a ton of movement! He could shield at any point because he never entered run, despite moving around half the bottom platform. Even better, Marth's dash allows him to crouch very low.

imgur.com/aTlf7xW

Melee is all about the subtle movements, like how Marth's up tilt moves his hurtbubbles slightly forward, allowing him do things like this, where the lean forward prevents the Falcon grab.

gfycat.com/MiniatureWelldocumentedAiredale

I play Melee, PM, and Smsah 4. In Melee and PM I play Link and I have top tier backups I almost never use. The ENTIRE point I was making is that having such movement options is fundamentally broken and too easily abusable against those with inferior movement options, to the point where they should entirely invalidate some or most characters [and thus kind of stupid... I know at least one player who was quite skilled and he quit Melee because dash dancing and the ledge mechanics were simply too abusive... he now plays traditional fighters and sees success in Melee thanks to his further improved footsies game, but he says that element is notably absent because dash dancing subsumes it all]. The way you highlighted PPMD's movement proves my point precisely - a character like Ganondorf in Minus has zero point zero ways to answer that without taking a massive commitment, and he should almost always die for doing so. And the reason Smash 4 is so much more balanced than Melee is that the things that top tiers abused the most [wavedashing, some shield pressure strings, chaingrabs, etc.] are not present [and Sheik is the best in Smash 4 because she still has the best ability to avoid landing traps, combo, and move within the system... but if you had all the movement options to that system, it's more than likely she or someone else becomes even more broken because they can abuse it so much better than the others].

PPMD is probably my favorite player [up alongside Axe and Plup], but I seriously believe that the way he plays Marth shows how much dash-dancing invalidates the need for interacting with opponent beyond simply spending the entire game dashing in and out. There is not a footsies game with block strings, crossups, pokes, or anything else that makes most fighers deeply intriguing, there's just him moving there waiting for a single opening to punish you as hard as possible, while all your options will be punished unless you outplayed him hard. He has reduced the game to almost purely movement in a way that seems to invalidate how the game usually works, and while I find it impressive and interesting to watch, I don't think it is good game design to allow this to work vs the slow characters, or that we should have a move making the entire situation much more extreme [which is exactly what boost does to Ganondorf, Bowser, and more].

But to return to the topic at hand, let's compare that to Sonic. Unlike Marth, Sonic is strongest when he's on top of you. Unlike Marth's melee movement, Boost has a very big, very static hurtbubble. Sonic can't win a match unless he touches you, so you always know he'll approach at some point. So yeah, he's fast, but he's big, obvious, and predictable. The only thing that saves this is his ability to not commit, which is much weaker in 4.0b than in 3.Q.

Ability to not commit to things is fundamentally poor game design. That's why Fox's shine and lasers are so obscenely good - he can short hop and do 5% across the entire length of the stage, while having a frame 1, invincible move that is a guaranteed kill move into the second strongest vertical killing move in the entire game, as well as a frame 7 move with armor on frame 7 that ignores shields and leads into a guaranteed killing aerial horizontally or a very potent vertical kill move with only a few frames to counterplay it, if they space poorly,, while on whiff, you can slide in either direction spending a total of about 22 frames doing so, the duration of most SHFFs. That sort of low commitment that ALSO forces someone else to commit to beat it is bad... that's why Falco's reflector isn't nearly so problematic, because while it is not high commitment [but DEFINITELY a commitment unless your opponent is clueless how to punish], it is not something you at all have to react to, and it's not something that automatically forces you to respond or die to a zero-death combo [unless you're Bowser because reflector's hitboxes combo into themselves on him]. You can just sort of shield it or get hit and move on, but with Sonic's dash dance game [or Marth's] (or boost dancing), that is 100% not an option.


That's how high level Melee works. People lose to Armada all the time when they make a mistake, too. That's why you get situations like this.

gfycat.com/FoolishWeightyIzuthrush


PPMD might be the best player in the world. Anyone getting zero-to-deathed looks like a terrible player compared to the person hitting them.

Wizzrobe is one of the best Falcon players out there, and here he is whiffing a dash grab and getting pillared to death by Westballz. Leffen might be the best Fox nowadays, and here's Armada following his SDI with four parasol hits, amongst many other things, killing him.

Having more options doesn't mean the game is broken or unbalanced, it means you have to be better at the game to deal with those options. No matter how tricky someone gets, someone will be able to outplay them if they read the situation properly.

Having an option that so thoroughly dominates the rest of the cast that you fundamentally uproot core gameplay is bad design. That's what Sonic's boost causes. There is no footsy game, and Sonic never has to commit to even a poke - he just presses side+b and jump carefully [and maybe even some regular dash dancing to really mess with them], then goes in when they whiff [or if they shield, then he can grab because yay that speed]. The problem is that Sonic's boost covers such a wide area that most characters simply can't swing, because if he's careful he's covering a different area most of the time, making it basically impossible to read when combined with its speed.

Also Armada wasn't getting zero-to-death'd most of the set, but chipped out by PPMD. And the fact is, you ALWAYS have to hard-read Sonic's boost to actually intercept it, which is downright awful design, given that nothing else functions that way [sure, you have to read Fox/Falco's phantasm, but those are linear, mostly fixed-distance, > 20 frames of startup, making them reactable and far less abusive].

"Be better to deal with those options"

Requiring you to consistently outplay your opponent so hard that they get hit out of the best evasive move in the game multiple times to win is just bad game design, as I've said before [roughly akin to Lucario's MAX counter - it's theoretically doable, if you're going to be THAT much better than them, but that's just a metric for a ridiculously game-breaking and over-powered-in-a-bad-way character]. I firmly believe if 3.Q became competitive on a serious level, the most broken character would be Sonic, because Boost is just too ridiculously good.

Unfortunately Minus doesn't have a debug mode, so I can't confirm this, but I'm pretty certain that Sonic is much taller than a dash dancing Marth. I don't know anything about Palutena. The main difference being that Sonic can't shield while boosting in the air, where I'm more likely to be boosting in the first place. (Boosting on the ground is asking for someone to throw a projectile at you in many matchups.) It's also a whole lot easier.

I actually just noticed that thread over in the Sonic forum. I'll redirect to there.

Sonic is harder to hit than Marth because he is moving significanty faster with the ability to move out of range [and back in] far faster than any other character in the entire game can - it's not about hitbox size at all, unless Boost does bizarre janky things to his hurtbox size ala quick attack [which I doubt]. My point was that if you had Marth and infinite-lightweight Palutena, you'd have a character that's absurdly difficult to hit, because of the huge swath of space they'd cover, and Sonic covers even more space [or optionally much less] at a much higher speed, leaving him even more able to punish the smallest of holes.

Stuff about FFAs said:
balance around FFAs!

Oh please god no. Stuff like this is why Smash 4 Ganondorf and Bowser are bad [never mind poor Zelda and Samus]. Ganondorf needs tools like utilt to keep up [frankly I think his utilt is nigh useless in one-v-one outside of a somewhat silly tech chase situation], and nerfing it would just make Ganondorf unnecessarily bad in 1v1s.

If a side effect of trying to keep characters viable for 1v1s is that they become extremely strong in FFAs that involve no truces or whatever, it may be a sign that the character might benefit from a re-design, but nerfing the character is a horrible idea because they are automatically worse off in 1v1s, and none of the characters who would be targeted by these nerfs [save perhaps Lucario] are particularly strong there to begin with.
 

Momurderer

Bazooka Koopa
Was just watching some Smash4 matches. It's nice to see a whole lot of no dash dancing. Sure it takes a lot of skill and has tons of strategy but it's just not fun to watch. I think Minus plays more like Smash4 and after watching a lot of you guys playing Minus matches on youtube I don't really see anybody here dash dancing. So was Boost dancing that big of a problem? It's kind of hard to control and as fast as Sonic is he might as well just stand still and Boost in a direction when a response is required instead of Boost dancing.

Thor's posts need to be compiled into a book. The Minuscronicom.
 

Thor

Well-Known Member
Was just watching some Smash4 matches. It's nice to see a whole lot of no dash dancing. Sure it takes a lot of skill and has tons of strategy but it's just not fun to watch. I think Minus plays more like Smash4 and after watching a lot of you guys playing Minus matches on youtube I don't really see anybody here dash dancing. So was Boost dancing that big of a problem? It's kind of hard to control and as fast as Sonic is he might as well just stand still and Boost in a direction when a response is required instead of Boost dancing.

Thor's posts need to be compiled into a book. The Minuscronicom.

Kien boost-danced a ton. And it was in lag and he was rusty, and it was still difficult to intercept with any consistency. As Falco I was usually punished for attempting to laser it at all, so I'd often resort to picking Sheik and using a few needles here and there while using onstage vanish any time I felt threatened since I had at least 4 options on most stages [land on platform, land in place, land left, land right], which is insanely difficult to cover in lag, even with Sonic, because of how absurdly safe Vanish was [and Vanish with its generous I-frames on startup was also AWFUL design that I'm very glad they removed, although it seems to lack invincibility during the travel which I asked to be reverted to having mid-travel only because otherwise Vanish becomes among the worst recoveries in the game].

In a lot of those videos I don't bother dash dancing because Falco is very slow relative to most of the cast, and the guy I fight most is a Falcon... dash-dancing against Falcon is Falco is a terrible idea in a game without crouch cancelling [another really abusable mechanic by Fox Falco Sheik Marth Peach ICs Puff... I think you can see where this went] because his nair can cover the entire DD, and Falco lacks the nair he had in Melee that made it somewhat safer to DD [because you could attempt to outrange his nair or hit it between the hits]. It's much better to simply focus on interrupting his DD with lasers and attempt to zone him to where you can force an error with Falco.

As Link [whom I play some], DDing sort of takes away from pulling stuff to throw at them. While I definitely DD sometimes to bait something, it's hard for Link in Melee/PM to maintain any semblance of stage control due to his DD covering a short area and Link being slow... plus a pure run gives Link the option of a pivot grab in PM, and pivot grabbing someone's approach is both an incredible punish and a useful tool [that I'm working in more]. There's also the fact that Link/Falco are slow enough to where if you misspace your DD even a little even at low levels of play [which I'm mostly beyond at this point], you get hit, unlike with Marth or Falcon, who are fast enough to cover slight spacing errors much quicker. And this effect is amplified by Wi-Fi lag, with less time to react and less time to adjust properly.

If you've seen my Falcon dittos, those were basically before I dash-danced ever. I've improved a lot in Melee/PM since those were put up, and I'd be interested in playing Falcon again in a ditto... I might see about hitting up Sunderstorm again and trying Falcon where I actually play him like Falcon instead of just fast Gnaondorf [who also benefits little from DDing].
 

Lucis Perficio

Radiant Hero of Blue Flames
Question: Why does Samus flash while charging smashes like uSmash and dSmash to a certain point? It's beyond the characteristic flashing that comes with charging a smash attack, it's like an orb of light that flashes on Samus torso when a smash is nearly fully charged.
 

justadood

Just a dood with ideas
Kien boost-danced a ton. And it was in lag and he was rusty, and it was still difficult to intercept with any consistency. As Falco I was usually punished for attempting to laser it at all, so I'd often resort to picking Sheik and using a few needles here and there while using onstage vanish any time I felt threatened since I had at least 4 options on most stages [land on platform, land in place, land left, land right], which is insanely difficult to cover in lag, even with Sonic, because of how absurdly safe Vanish was [and Vanish with its generous I-frames on startup was also AWFUL design that I'm very glad they removed, although it seems to lack invincibility during the travel which I asked to be reverted to having mid-travel only because otherwise Vanish becomes among the worst recoveries in the game].

In a lot of those videos I don't bother dash dancing because Falco is very slow relative to most of the cast, and the guy I fight most is a Falcon... dash-dancing against Falcon is Falco is a terrible idea in a game without crouch cancelling [another really abusable mechanic by Fox Falco Sheik Marth Peach ICs Puff... I think you can see where this went] because his nair can cover the entire DD, and Falco lacks the nair he had in Melee that made it somewhat safer to DD [because you could attempt to outrange his nair or hit it between the hits]. It's much better to simply focus on interrupting his DD with lasers and attempt to zone him to where you can force an error with Falco.

As Link [whom I play some], DDing sort of takes away from pulling stuff to throw at them. While I definitely DD sometimes to bait something, it's hard for Link in Melee/PM to maintain any semblance of stage control due to his DD covering a short area and Link being slow... plus a pure run gives Link the option of a pivot grab in PM, and pivot grabbing someone's approach is both an incredible punish and a useful tool [that I'm working in more]. There's also the fact that Link/Falco are slow enough to where if you misspace your DD even a little even at low levels of play [which I'm mostly beyond at this point], you get hit, unlike with Marth or Falcon, who are fast enough to cover slight spacing errors much quicker. And this effect is amplified by Wi-Fi lag, with less time to react and less time to adjust properly.

If you've seen my Falcon dittos, those were basically before I dash-danced ever. I've improved a lot in Melee/PM since those were put up, and I'd be interested in playing Falcon again in a ditto... I might see about hitting up Sunderstorm again and trying Falcon where I actually play him like Falcon instead of just fast Gnaondorf [who also benefits little from DDing].
i don't want to take any sides in a debate like this, but i was looking through this thread to see stuff more directed at the patch itself..
i liked the idea of ganon getting a sound fx to his up tilt that was mentioned. that couldn't really hurt his game, and little things like thos are what help new players to minus learn how it goes... i find that the most fun way for ME to play, is in FFAs.. i play much less competitively in minus, simply because i like playing games like this with more people, but it's hard to keep anyone up to date on all the changes here, and sometimes it'd help if the game was better at warning players without me needing to...
 

justadood

Just a dood with ideas
i frequently feel like the gamers on this site have a very competitive edge and want minus to be very dedicated to the better players. there's constantly talk of wanting more cancels on characters and there seems to be a strong desire to set a really high learning curve.. you guys are talking about tactics that champion gamers use when you discuss what needs to be included or compare skill levels xP
this is one of the reasons minus is so hard to get behind for people not familiar with it.. you don't have to cop-out for fan-service and put in goku or spiderman to get more players in minus, but you shouldn't be making the game feel so exclusive and unfamiliar with so many changes so often no one can keep track xP ...dynamic changes are usually really cool! but often when it's a version that one of you has made before, you just say "reverted to 3.6" or something, and although most of us here get it, it's not easy for new fans to find what's new or different...
 

justadood

Just a dood with ideas
can we at least discuss where we want the edge to be (in regards to the learning curve)?

it seems like the majority want to turn minus into a more "serious," more competitive game, and constantly look at PM and Melee for examples.

whereas the largest minority here want minus to be a more "fun," more casual game, and look at source material of the characters and minus's history for examples

the tier system list is gone, and this makes it hard for me to site any examples of what can be done now, but in the past we gauged balance by looking at how broken a single character was, and in extreme cases (like lucario), fixed that character by removing or reducing its ability to be abused, but in most cases, offered something new to everyone else who had a harder time with it; and by looking at how weak a single character was, and extreme cases overhauled a moveset to center around a new method of play (look at how different Dedede or Olimar became), but in most cases, offered something new to these characters who have less trouble. this was more or less to balance match-ups or at least square off the roster.

now, it seems that updates are dedicated solely to one-on-one balance and making almost every character very combo based.. there are many less drastic changes, while also having difficult changelists so no newcomers see how different it is from the original (this issue has been this way since the beginning), and strange risk taking, like pichu's introduction, and less of the dynamic changes, yet more with no reference... it just seems like the cool stuff we put in is harder to find! most newcomers for instance accidentally find out about differences between holding or tapping attacks, and don't even know what or how it happened. I have no clue what can be done on the gaming end, but the alt moves could at least have a pattern between characters, so alt moves have more universal controls (like only being on tilt attacks for extreme example, or less B+A simultaneous moves)...

just..

this game is weird
 

Valravn

Well-Known Member
Honestly, I don't think this game needs the kind of subtle, tournament-result-based tweaking that PM gets. It's fine to change things for the hell of it and see what shakes out. I love Melee and PM because they are complex, difficult games that have tons of options and give me the tools to play aggressively and (reasonably) fairly with about anyone I meet.

I don't see anything wrong with Minus doing weird shit for the humor value. I don't think we're aiming to be a sixth smash game here. I'd be delighted if there were ever as many Minus events as brawl/64 events at local tournaments nowadays, but outside of my own I don't see it happening. If that is a goal, this kind of intense balance discussion is totally warranted.

Gross imbalances should be looked into, but my understanding is that most people who play Brawl Minus come for the pizzazz and the crazy stuff that you simply won't see in another smash game. Boost, Gandouken, Rock Smash, Waddle Control, Gerudo Dragon, Illusion, Royal Rampage, the entire character that is Zelda; these things astonish everyone I introduce to this game! And they want to try them all, see what they can do.

Last year I TO'd four Minus round robin side events, and nobody left with the impression, "This game isn't fair, I don't want to enter again." They kept coming back so they could try more stuff and beat that Meta Knight that carried them off the upper blast zone, or that Jigglypuff who kept singing at them onstage. I'm looking forward to starting them up again, but I doubt most people will notice the changes, other than me playing less Sonic now. :rolleyes:

What I'm trying to say is that Meta Knight's forward throw needs to dispense beam swords again.
 

Thor

Well-Known Member
What I'm trying to say is that Meta Knight's forward throw needs to dispense beam swords again.

All of my yes. I miss this. Especially the huge KB, wicked angle [tone that down slightly...], and the ability to make item play a thing with MK.

If we're not looking to balance this to where tournaments could run this consistently and have people actually practice and play the game at a high level, unlimited Boost is fine, but for people looking at that and abusing it, it will seriously piss some people off, and might kill/weaken a scene if someone actually grinds it. But if we get to that point, patching it again to tone it down would probably be sufficient [a hotfix within the scene or something], although it might alienate the Sonic players again... meh, burn that bridge when it's reached, I suppose.

Also, for silly stuff, flying War-

*Gets flame choked by Gold_TSG*

*hack* *cough* hack* HEY LET ME FINISH BRO!

FLYING WARIO BIKE back [zero gravity effect] please. Someone said it was removed to let Wario land while using bike, but... I still have yet to find the purpose of landing during bike [if someone can explain it to me, by all means], and this was one of the super silly things I loved about Minus myself [it also nerfs his recovery randomly and he doesn't need that]. I have plenty of other ideas too!


i frequently feel like the gamers on this site have a very competitive edge and want minus to be very dedicated to the better players. there's constantly talk of wanting more cancels on characters and there seems to be a strong desire to set a really high learning curve.. you guys are talking about tactics that champion gamers use when you discuss what needs to be included or compare skill levels xP
this is one of the reasons minus is so hard to get behind for people not familiar with it.. you don't have to cop-out for fan-service and put in goku or spiderman to get more players in minus, but you shouldn't be making the game feel so exclusive and unfamiliar with so many changes so often no one can keep track xP ...dynamic changes are usually really cool! but often when it's a version that one of you has made before, you just say "reverted to 3.6" or something, and although most of us here get it, it's not easy for new fans to find what's new or different...

I think you just single-handedly diffused an argument and simultaneously gave new discussion material. Quite impressive!

EDIT: TL; dr... since this is the final patch, it might be best to sacrifice some of the balance considerations that have been being discussed in the interests of making the game and final product more fun/whacky for all... I have PLENTY of suggestions for that if anyone wants to hear them [and I'd love to hear yours]!
 

Bent 00

Longtime Limit Breaker
The devs are trying to make Minus more noob-friendly with the character intro videos. Give 'em credit for that.

The only real way to balance Smash is around serious, high-level 1v1 play. All you can do for FFAs is to keep them relatively free of crap.

Minus needs to continue "growing up". Catering to casual "For Fun" players will not help Minus spread or endure.

More polish and small "just-for-fun" things certainly wouldn't hurt, but neither are as important as balancing the core game.

Let's not bring back the silly, obnoxious stuff. Encourage the devs to fix or remove the remaining nonsense, instead of adding more in.

They are trying to finish up Minus, so I figure that the devs want to avoid creating anything new which they'll need to adjust later.

To those of you who aren't happy with the direction Minus is going... Make your own Custom Builds.

/my 2 cents
 

Thor

Well-Known Member
Let's not bring back the silly, obnoxious stuff. Encourage the devs to fix or remove the remaining nonsense, instead of adding more in.

I think there's a difference between silly and obnoxious. The beam sword on MK fthrow? Silly, but flavorful. The angle on his fthrow [and Peach's]? Obnoxious. Wario's bike? Silly. Jumpcancellable double team at all percents? Obnoxious. 50% firefox? Silly, and arguably slightly obnoxious, but DEFINITELY impractical [and SDIable]. Sonic's dair? Obnoxious. Lucario's super taunt? Silly. Lucario's old aura scaling? Both, definitely both. Ike's old super attacks? Silly, and somewhat obnoxious given the power buffs granted by NSM [wonder if NSM had no damage buffs but gave access to the supers... hm...]

That said, there's a fine line sometimes [firefox], and many people disagree on where that line lies. But I think if devs ultimately agreed on stuff that was borderline broken [or just plain broken?] but definitely silly/funny, it should at least be experimented with before throwing it out. Maybe a toned-down multi-laser for 4.0? [If it could be tweaked to have Brawl KB and no shield damage, as compared to the normal laser with its obscene KB and high shield damage, I'd be totally down for a new multi-laser.] (And plenty more ideas, mostly slightly less extreme, where that came from!)

(One of the most obvious instances of silly vs obnoxious is Falco's voice clip on Firebird of "PERSONALLY, I PREFER FIRE!" [I think silly, but it annoys many...]... if we're not going to have alternative modes of firebird as I've suggested earlier, could it at least be that holding the taunt button while doing firebird plays the clip?)

And while Minus may not spread or endure if it becomes too casual-focused, it's kinda hard to draw people into competitive Brawl Minus when a much wider audience is captivated by Melee and/or Smash 4... part of Minus's charm is its silliness that gives way to incredible depth and a (by-and-large) amazing balancing job done by the devs. If we remove too much of that, it's still amazing to play, but I think it loses part of its charm... I think Minus definitely risks taking itself too seriously, and while the balance can be taken super seriously, in the end I think the gameplay should still be slightly over-the-top and have a lot of fun/silly elements that everyone can enjoy, casual and competitive alike.
 
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