I know. What I'm saying is that Ultimate has so many changes catering to the competitive crowd that the change of Melee players going in is higher than ever.
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Sakurai: players “gave up on Melee because it’s too technical", won't focus too much on competitive
- Thread starter Atheerios
- Start date
No one is arguing that Smash 4 isn't competitive, from what I've seen.
The edge mechanics are way more involved than you described. In Smash 4 your options off the edge are indeed limited, but most characters have insanely good recoveries and can get back to the edge for free. Sure, at that point they can't threathen ledgedash, but even if they get punished for a roll on stage they probably won't die until 150%.
As for Melee, very few players are able to abuse the ledge effectively. Even then, the edge is far from an advantageous position. Camping the edge may be safe, but getting back on stage is not: most characters don't have good ledgedashes, and you make it sound like there's no risk involved, when the penalty for mistiming it is death. It's not like ledgedashes are impossible to punish, either.
Other ledge options suck in Melee compared to Smash 4: roll is slower, and get-up attack or normal stand-up have additional lag over 100%.
I mean, I kinda get your point, but it seems a little strange to conclude that Smash 4 is the most competitive because of the edge mechanics, when in reality Smash 4 and the previous games are too different to compare in this aspect.
People invited to the invitational (and other top level players at E3) apparently got asked for feedback by Nintendo reps. Also it's clear they're trying to cater to the competitive players at least a little bit with the changes to the game that we've already seen, such as hazard toggle, nerfs to air dodging/rolling, lower landing lag, higher knockback/damage in 1v1s, etc.
You can take issue with Sakurai's statement. But that doesn't mean he's going to make a Melee 2.0. Even in a casual play setting, there's a lot of balancing that needs to be done to the game to make it fun and fair. The 2 settings do require different balancing priorities, but it's not like casual play is going to be random fun with no balancing needed.
Of course that's how you took it. It wasn't my point at all.
The fact of the matter is, if he delivers a quality product that is critically acclaimed, and has the Smash name attached to it. It's gonna be successful, with, or without Melee's mechanics. Brawl has proved this and I don't even care for the game.
You talking about limiting player base or whatever is funny as fuck. A good number of people buying this might not have every touched Melee.
I think you lose perspective when you view mechanics like conservation of momentum while jumping and random tripping through a "casual vs competitive" lens.
Keeping momentum when you dash into a jump isn't good because it's "competitive". It's good because it feels natural and is a staple of good platformers.
Random tripping isn't bad because it's "casual". It's bad because randomly losing control of your character isn't fun.
When the game's basic mechanics take a clear downgrade in many ways, as happened in Brawl, we shouldn't try to defend it just because "Competitive players don't like it". Everyone, from the newest player to the experienced champion, can better appreciate a game when the basic act of moving feels satisfying.
Keeping momentum when you dash into a jump isn't good because it's "competitive". It's good because it feels natural and is a staple of good platformers.
Random tripping isn't bad because it's "casual". It's bad because randomly losing control of your character isn't fun.
When the game's basic mechanics take a clear downgrade in many ways, as happened in Brawl, we shouldn't try to defend it just because "Competitive players don't like it". Everyone, from the newest player to the experienced champion, can better appreciate a game when the basic act of moving feels satisfying.
This is where I stand with it. As much as I enjoy playing a semi serious game of Melee and sometimes enjoy watching it, I don't really "want" to get even better at it, because the more I try the more I feel like I'm pulling teeth in order to advance my skills as a player. If I look at a video like this I just nope the fuck out of there. Plus even from a quality of life experience I feel like Melee controls in a comparatively rigid manner contrast to other Smash games which makes it feel to me that if I don't actually learn half of the tech then it just doesn't feel as good.
What I like about recent Smash games is they try to take strides in enabling competitive gameplay but with a balanced entry barrier where I at least know what I can do to improve my game. Smash 4 had a lot of ways to go yet when it came to improving itself but for me Ultimate is finally hitting that sweetspot of mechanics that are easy to jump into and also feel like they offer a breadth of competitive flexibility, and given how anecdotal a lot of posts in here are about their own casual buddies disagreeing with Sakurai's "opinion", I can safely say I'm not alone in thinking that way from my own personal experience. Sure, I still wish Ultimate had stuff like conservation of momentum etc., it's not perfect, but a lot of changes like universal jumpsquats, low landing lag etc. are still great decisions that are going to feel good regardless if you're casual or competitive. Melee is good, but we don't need another game like it, just like how we don't need another Third Strike.
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'There will never be 3 Smash Bros at EVO' and 'We can't accomodate Melee's 3/5 top 64, so this may be its last year' are two independent statements.
Basically, Melee is out regardless unless they drop to 2/3s. If they do there could be Melee and Ultimatr, otherwise it's just Ultimate (unless Sm4sh players don't move on, but that's unlikely).
I have no idea where you got that from anything I said. And I still don't get why what any of the games sell has to do with how much that original poster enjoyed Melee. I'm deeply confused. All I talked about was what I liked out of melee and why I kept playing Melee (and in turn ProjectM) over its successors.
Nobody is talking about a Melee 2.0. The balancing that needs to be done for casual play is the same that needs to be done for competitive. What diferent balancing priorities are you talking about here? If you balance for competitive the casual crowd would have just as much fun with the game than if they didn't balance it around that. Nobody cared for balance in Brawl. Most broken POS ever, yet people who don't care about no item matches or wavedashing had mad fun with it.
Everybody had fun with Melee, no matter the skill. The game wasn't balanced at all. They didn't cater to anyone back then, the released a game that most casuals had fun with and competitive people found exploits and mechanics in that the devs didn't intend. Nobody complained about those exploits ruinining their casual fun with the game back then. That narrative is utter BS.
Mind you, I'm planning to put a unhealthy amount of time into Ultimate. Game looks wonderful. That's the thing, people who disagree with Sakurai here always get labeled as Melee fanatics who don't want anything else. Nobody in here said that.
This.
"I love Melee but I'm looking forward to what they do with.."
" THEY WON'T DO MELEE 2.0!"
"...ok?"
Yep. The "casual players left melee cause it was too competitive" argument only arose once Brawl came out and people looked to defend some of the mechanics in the game. I'm still waiting for anyone who claims people didn't like melee at the time to bring some sort of forum post or evidence that people were frustrated with melee while melee was the current smash. I was on the smashboards during its heyday, never a mention of it.
And the people they will face off against will never know what it is either. Its a vapid argument.
Either they changed it/tried to change it, you're mistaken, or Mr. Wizard is mistaken. I'm just relaying what he wrote.
I don't engage with any of that stuff in Melee and I still greatly prefer it over Brawl and Smash4.
Back when Melee was out? Yeah, you'd have a point, but given how Smash is online now, they definitely would. Wavedashing would essentially be the new Snaking.
Not that I want wavedashing back, but if Nintendo would care to do an actual matchmaking system these people would never meet each other online either.
This.
Exactly. Throwing the baby out with the bath water over a problem that isn't even the central issue. Matchmaking would alleviate the grand majority of players running into elite players that can perform maneuvers only what 10% of the population can pull off?
Go back and read the quote chain.
I don't care enough to explain to you the context of the post you chose to quote.
"Limiting your audience"
Mr. Wizard's comments were in regards to melee players requiring 3/5 for top 64 in future EVOs.
Melee is heavily overrated. Brawl did much more for the series by introducing Assist Trophies and the Smash Ball, two genuinely great additions to the franchise that make the games a lot more fun to me. I don't care about your wavedashing.
One of the reasons I'm excited for the change to canceling dashes.
People won't even realize that this helps to recreate the options wavedashing opened up that Melee fans have been wanting to see, haha.
Where did you and others hang to run into tournament elitists this often? I've been to a number of events with a side Melee setup before Brawl was released and never encountered these aggressive tournament-style players that ruined the fun for everyone else. Mind you, this was in Montreal, which is a fairly big city with a large Smash community, and home to Dylan_Tnga, one of the most notorious and obnoxious Melee fanboys.
The margin by which casual Melee players outnumbered tournament players was so large (I wouldn't be surprised if the ratio was something like 15:1 or bigger) that I find these accounts of unavoidable tournament elitists very hard to believe.
Its scary when you aren't good at the newest version. Happened to the SF3 and SF4 players as well.
You're definitely right that it isn't exactly easy or free in Melee to get back on the stage or abuse edge, but it's possible. I like to say in Melee if you press the (L/R) trigger, be prepared to die.
I guess what I'm trying to say is the game itself is enforcing rules to get players to get back on the stage (and off the edge). In Smash 4, the fight resembles (vaguely) that like a point sparring Karate match where someone "scores" a point from a hit (you knock opponent off stage), there is a brief stop to the fight (opponent usually grabs edge pretty easily/free in Smash 4), and the fight commences (opponent attempts or successfully gets back on stage off the limited edge options). In previous iterations of Smash, with the ability to refresh invincibility, it's not quite so clear cut as to when the opponent will get back on the stage.
Ultimate introduces alot of mechanics that the competitive scene is loving so this is weird lol
What a completely silly sentiment. Most of them stuck around because they didn't like the new versions not because they couldn't be the best at them. IN the case of melee, I'd wadger many of them would be just as good at the subsequent versions as they were at melee if they put in the effort.
It's also less execution heavy than wavedashing. People shouldn't cling too much on wavedashing and instead look at the tools that the game is offering, wavedashing isn't a must (it also looks really janky) and neither is L-Cancelling.
Right, that's one of the things I really like about Ultimate, a lot of those changes feel more deliberate in granting mobility options that feel much less prohibitive and which everyone can take advantage of in a way that feels organic. Not only will "casuals" have general under the hood improvements to make for a smoother experience they might not fully cognizant of at first, but those intermediate competitive players will have much more of a palpable breathing room to improve in a way that doesn't require them to completely tear into the game at it's very seams.
I genuinely feel like the topic title is just a tad misleading. His quotes here don't really concern "casual players" as much as the competitive players who just aren't at the same level of technical execution as the cream of the crop. It's less about not focusing on being competitive and more about not making everything extremely technical to a superfluous level, and that doesn't really contradict most of Sakurai's intentions of making Ultimate more competitive-friendly over Smash 4 and Brawl. I mean, we even got players like Mango saying we don't need another Melee and that with just a few changes, he could see himself dipping into Ultimate.
The best Brawl player, Mew2King, was and still is one of the best Melee players.
So scary.
The vast majority of the Melee players couldn't adapt to Brawl. There are more Sandford Kellys than Justin Wongs.
A lot of Melee players adapted just fine to Brawl and simply chose to kept playing Melee instead. I'm among them. I played Brawl competitively for two years alongside Melee before I became pretty bored of it.
"Man they really made this game for scrubs where's the challenge"
We know what will happen here. Either way the 1% of people who care about these mechanics will still bitch because it's not exactly like their game of choice.
Nah.
Only ones making obscure, limited rulesets of a more complex game just to fit their agenda are "competitive" Smash players.
Ignoring core elements of a game to make it more "hardcore" is the equivalent of 1on1 streetballers thinking they're the best at actual basketball.
Yeah, but you still got that with Brawl, still got that with Smash 4, and you're still going to get that with Smash Ultimate.
Yeah, pressing the items off button in the menu and playing with two people is some real obscure shit.
I can see why. :P
Heh, I'm a Kirby main (which may also explain my complex towards competitive play), so it's all been downhill since the N64 days.
Sounds like your understanding of what "competitive" Smash players and their playing habits are like was pulled straight from a time portal that leads to internet arguments from 2008. Like, come on. You're channeling some tired "fox only final destination" bullshit here like that's the only way competitive players ever choose to play and enjoy Smash.
It's fair to use both terms. A lot of top Melee players got stomped out in both Brawl and Smash 4. Hungrybox still has irregular showings in Smash 4 but by his own admission he has a hard time dealing with Smash 4 prioritizing elements of the game that aren't solely dictated by raw technical prowess, while players like Mew2King fared so much better. By that same token, there's Smash 64 veterans like Isai who can't deal with post-64 Smash games period because shield platform dropping was made too difficult in subsequent games (however he still plays Melee infrequently at tournament level).
There's a very good reason why Brawl died the moment Smash 4 was released.
Because it was generally terrible to actually play. Going back to it after playing Melee or Smash 4 it feels like absolute garbage.