"There may never be another Smash Bros. as hardcore as Melee."

Says series creator Masuhiro Sakurai.

edited 9th Dec '10 1:49:06 PM by IYellalot

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And I beleive the correct term is there will never be another mash bros that is played as hardcore as melee, since technically a game itself can't be hardcore, hardcore is the dedication to which you play it and considering the amount of love for melee by hardcore smash bros players, that's probably true.

When All Else Fails, you have fun and flirt wit da ladies, dats da Drawings way!

Looks like he's saying Melee was too difficult.

edited 9th Dec '10 1:48:37 PM by SpellBlade

Just fixed the broken link.

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Fixed. At least, I hope we don't get another one. After the shitfest that ensued in the wake of Brawl, the fans don't deserve another.

Melee wasn't difficult at all.

You got some dirt on you. Here's some more!

I'm pretty sure those people just playing it at parties and hanging out with their real-life friends (a.k.a. OMG CASUALS!) aren't starting shitfests, so it's unfair to blame them.

Because clearly nobody enjoyed Melee except hardcore players oh wait bullshit

That is pretty unfortunate. I really don't play Smash enough to get really good at it, but the Melee matches at my school are far, far more impressive than the Brawl ones, even though I actually stand a chance at the latter. I wonder whether it would be at all sensible to include some kind of toggle between a more newcomer-friendly, floatier gameplay and another faster one with a higher learning curve.

That's actually pretty funny.

But Melee's difficulty wasn't the game speed. It was hit-stun, only one sliding air dodge, and every single shield being able to reflect and... well I'm glad they tossed the all shields are reflector bull crap but the game was hardly that hardcore as opposed to say...pretty much every notable 2D fighting game before it, or at least before the 64 version.

Besides that though, what he should really kick himself for is not fixing that air dodge glitch, not fixing another glitch from the very first game, getting rid of special entrances, and throwing in so many clone characters. The latter two aren't even difficulty issues, intros were just cosmetic but they were a good cosmetic darnit!

Modified Ura-nage, Torture Rack

Even though I dislike Brawl, I concede that many people like it, and I also concede that it's by far the best game in the genre its series invented. There are plenty of games for hardcore gamers to choose from. It's time to tap a different market.

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

Wait what? As far as I know, the opposite happened and powershielding became easier in Brawl.

Calling that a glitch is debatable.

Calling that a glitch is not debatable.

L-canceling was a glitch in the first game, probably, but it was a game mechanic in Melee. They intentionally put it in. The original cut all landing lag, the Melee version cuts landing lag in half under very specific conditions much like teching, and a glitch does not do that sort of thing.

L-canceling was also one of the best things about Melee. All it did was make the good characters a tiny bit better, while some really horrid ones were improved a lot. Such is the nature of cutting a weakness in half.

Brawl+.

Grabbing is where you must begin Shaking for treasure from within Throwing far is how to win!

I think it's a mistake to assume that capturing the "hardcore" market necessarily means alienating the casuals. Does the presence of wavedashing and l-canceling make the game any worse for a casual player?

It Just Bugs Me

Balanced Brawl?

Evidently casuals are completely incapable of avoiding getting sucked into a game with competitive players who will mercilessly traumatize them for life. They at least need to have the illusion that they're in control by letting them block a lot while they're being beaten up, of course.

edited 9th Dec '10 2:45:47 PM by Fawriel

It's at worst a glitch and at best an exploitable oversight.

It's definitely a Game-Breaker, though. Unlike some more famous fighting game Game Breakers, it didn't take. For which I'm glad, because it really does turn the game into something very different.

^ I've always found it an odd quirk in fighting game communities that people tend to deem the terms "casual" and "hardcore" as synonyms for "unskilled" and "skilled" respectively, even though there are many "hardcore" players who aren't worth a damn and many "casual" players who are quite good at the game.

edited 9th Dec '10 2:48:56 PM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

Calling it a Game-Breaker is just wrong, but that is a debate I really don't want to get involved with.

No. It's not. It's a Game-Breaker by the very definition of the term, because it takes the system that the game has and completely takes it to another level. It grants boons that the game wasn't designed to grant, and it effectively changes gameplay drastically.

Sounds like a Game-Breaker to me.

edited 9th Dec '10 2:54:32 PM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

You say it like it was a bad thing.

Whether or not they're "glitches" or "game breakers", we must still ask two questions:

• do they make the game worse for tournament players?
• do they make the game worse for casual players?

It Just Bugs Me

I wouldn't put the issue in terms of casuals and hardcores. Melee, moreso than most games, is one where so-called casuals and hardcores tend to play extremely different game (again, see Game-Breaker, but not just because of wavedashing), so, really, the issue isn't that big between them. Arguably, "hardcores" bereft of some of their less intentionally-coded tricks, could adapt and make new techniques after it's removal, but, if the internet is to be believed, that didn't happen in too large numbers, so I suppose the removal of wavedashing hurt "hardcores," but I'm not sure whether that's stubbornness or not.

On the other hand, complex tricks, especially ones you're not supposed to do in the first place, that give the user a leg up on their opponent tend makes games particularly harsh to newcomers more than anything else. The more technical a game is, the harder it is to get into.

edited 9th Dec '10 3:02:57 PM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

The removal of wavedashing is far from being the only aspect that makes Brawl less interesting for competitive gameplay, you have to consider. And while wavedashing and stuff do make the higher level of play harder to get into, and might make it more frustrating for newcomers, what you have to keep in mind is that mastering a technique like that requires large amounts of practice. Hours of practice. Regularly. Anyone who practices that much will always be superior in skill to someone who doesn't.

I don't think it's a matter of hardcore players "adapting"—yeah, some will, some won't. We're talking about whether it's fun to play at a high level.

Actually I think wavedashing is immaterial. The complaints about Brawl have more to do with the lowered hitstun and the floatiness.

It Just Bugs Me

^^ While you have a very good point, phrases like "will always" in mediums that involve human ingenuity still kind of make me cringe instinctually. I can safely say I've defeated people I knew to be much more skilled than me in learning many fighting games (including Melee) by way of outwitting and ingenuity, in no small part because there's a lot of people out there who learn to do things like wavedash and assume that makes them automatically more skilled, then lose by way of underestimating their opponent / overestimating themselves.

A lot of the other things that make Brawl less interesting competitively seem a bit... subjective to me. I used to use the term "arbitrary" to describe much of fans' deeming one version of Smashs' mechanics as "superior" to another, until I realized I was likely being too harsh.

In truth, tt's a staple of games in general. There are still people who play SFII and consider it more "competitive" than any other version of the series, or SFIII, or SFIV, and even Alpha. Who's right? Good question, as is the question of what makes something "more competitive" or not, because it's obviously not so cut and dry.

Consider the Sonic... fan... base...

Right, bad example. But bear with me.

Consider a conversation where different people taut different games of the series is the best, and claim gameplay mechanics as proof, while others might claim the lack of those mechanics or different mechanics completely as proof that another game is better. It's why you get long debates over S3&K or Sonic 2, and such.

edited 9th Dec '10 3:22:46 PM by KnownUnknown

"The difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense." - Tom Clancy, paraphrasing Mark Twain.

The idea of "more competitive" is bullshit and I've been trying to get Smashers to stop thinking along those lines. It's like "more pregnant". Every game where you can win or lose is equally competitive; every game is only as hard as your opponent. The salient question is whether a game is "good", and that is, I agree, subjective.

It Just Bugs Me