Brawl - More or Less Balanced than Melee?

[LevesqueIsKing]

I'm going to try to have an educated debate here. Back up your statements with evidence.

This is NOT a tier list discussion, nor is it a discussion of whether tier lists exist or not. If you've yet to realize that they exist, please do not post in this thread.

Prior to release, many of the pro's were stating that Brawl was going to revolutionize the Super Smash Bros. series simply due to its equality. Even after release, people continued to praise Brawl for its seemingly perfect balance. However, now that I've scraped away at the golden cover of Brawl, it seems as though it were made of metal.

I'm really afraid that when we finally recieve that first official tier list the results are going to be devestating. It just seems as though the gap
between best and worse is SO much more exaggerated this time around. Space animals and Prince Marth will still rule supreme, will still win half of all tournaments, and will still be overused by noobs. And Sakurai did not boost old bottom-tier characters nearly enough, such as Yoshi, destined to be the future scum of Brawl.

I also doubt that Sakurai realized how much taking out advanced techniques such as L-Cancelling and Wavedashing hurt SPECIFIC characters. Perhaps he thought that it would hurt all characters equally? That happens to be significantly false. Slow characters are punished HORRIBLY if they miss an aerial due to the lack of L-Cancelling, and other characters' playstyles were molded AROUND advanced techniques.

Don't kid yourselves, tier lists are alive and kicking, and people choose their characters based on them. I mained Falcon in Melee [nearly guaranteed bottom tier in Brawl] and I still love the guy, but fact is that ITS NOT FUN playing as him anymore. You can tell me that I can still win against top tiers, but its NOT FUN losing 2/3 of the time when I could main a top tier and win 9/10 of the time. Hell, I can't even consistently beat my casual friends, let alone computers, with Falcon. I'm not making excuses, I'm stating fact. I'm on the verge of switching back to Melee simply because Falcon was fun to play as back then, and *coincidentally* he was high-mid tier. I don't like Brawl because of this, because it hardly allows me to use the character I want to use. I don't want to switch characters, but I don't want to lose matches that I know I should win, either.

And now I'll leave you with a question. We were all hoping for 50, even 60 characters, but what is the use of having so many characters if they are so unequal that half of them ARE NOT USED BY ANYONE. I would have rather Sakurai kept Melee's roster and made them completely equal. That would have been the perfect game. You'll see in the coming months that every person online will be using Space Animals, Marth, Pit and Diddy. Sakurai might as well have given us a roster of 5 characters...

 

[Brawny]

I main Marth, shaddap. =(

And I laughed out loud at "space animals"

Aaaand I'm sure the harder characters to get into may turn out to be more powerful than they seem. IE: Olimar, Lucas.

 

[JKill09]

I'm with you. I find it very difficult to use Captain Falcon in this game. In the last game I couldn't be touched, but in Brawl it's a different story. I can use both adventure modes to back this up. The Melee adventure mode was equally (well moreso than not) easy or difficult for each character. When I played Subspace and got to the 'Great Maze', the difficulty varied so much. You had to pick 4 characters and it felt as if I was playing on 4 separate difficulty levels. As far as wavedashing goes, there's really no point in Luigi having bad traction. He's hurt immensely because he could wavedash extremely well because of his horrible traction in Melee. Now he's forced to just run around looking like a fool and gaining nothing from it (unless anybody has found a technique utilizing his slippery ways).

 

[KHgamer]

it's less balance, buti consider that a good thing. i dont ever wanna see ike lose 2 jigglypuff. -watch out ike....

 

[JKill09]

^But in a sense isn't that making some characters "useless"?

 

[Destiny]

i think people were expecting too much of this game...i even heard there was gonna be 100 characters...wtf?but the game is still my fave.

 

[Lugia]

on the 64 version i was a fox user. when melee came around i decided to still be a fox user for a little while till one day i started screwing around with ganon in training mode to find i liked his slow style more then anything else. im still a ganon user and now somewhat a PT user even tho my play is mediocre with him. i have never let tiers base my char choices otherwise id probably be trying to use wolf. i dont know much about yoshi but i heard how much better bowser was supposed to be. so much for that.

i dont think tiers are going to get worse. i honestly think they were so bad for melee that even with 11 more chars youll just have more general classes.

i dont think too much has been expected of this game because people are still holding up their nearly perfect ratings but when it comes to nuts and bolts you find its a very shallow game.

 

[Douten]

Is it that bad that you can't win him with him against casual friends? I don't know any AT or anything but I do a decent job across the rooster.

I believe that it's just a new playing style that we will need to get to on certain character and let go of the dependent on previous ATs. I understand that some character are nerf even more without Lcancel and stuff, but there should be other things you can use yes?

I haven't played the game enough yet to say if it's more balanced or not (as have I with Melee) but from the amount that I've played I say some changes are good.

 

[mushroomedmario]

Is it that bad that you can't win him with him against casual friends? I don't know any AT or anything but I do a decent job across the rooster.

I believe that it's just a new playing style that we will need to get to on certain character and let go of the dependent on previous ATs. I understand that some character are nerf even more without Lcancel and stuff, but there should be other things you can use yes?

I haven't played the game enough yet to say if it's more balanced or not (as have I with Melee) but from the amount that I've played I say some changes are good.

i agree, no matter who i use, i usually get the same results against my friends that play the same person over and over

they seem way more balanced in this game, and yoshi is a lot better, people just says he sucks because they don't like his playing style, but people who main yoshi could be really good with him

 

[Dorkfish]

I think that tiers do exist, but that they change over time. People can easily adapt and find away around the powerful characters, or discover a new power.

For example, if Tactic X is popular within a gaming community, some players may choose to use Tactic Y for the advantages it offers over Tactic X, even though Tactic Y may be considered a poor choice in most circumstances. Likewise, Tactic Z, while usually strong, may be avoided because of its vulnerabilities to Tactic X. Eventually Tactic X may become less prominent as more players adapt to it. Tactic Z may come back into vogue as a result, or an entirely new effective tactic may be discovered.

That pretty much sums it up right there.

 

[LeWaffles]

you should use someone else...
I think brawl is more balanced simply because it is much slower paced. That gives slow characters a much better chance, look what happened to Bowser. It also sets up the combos really well. No longer existing "adv. Techs" make the game so that any player using any character may execute techniques without having the ridiculously fast moves that were limited to only certain characters. When I play this game, I start to not like Melee, you can see its flaws when you play Brawl.

 

[LevesqueIsKing]

i agree, no matter who i use, i usually get the same results against my friends that play the same person over and over

they seem way more balanced in this game, and yoshi is a lot better, people just says he sucks because they don't like his playing style, but people who main yoshi could be really good with him

Of course they can be good...for a Yoshi user. And THAT is the point. A Yoshi user with X amount of skill WILL NOT BEAT a Fox user with X amount of skill. In fact, they wouldn't even come close. And no, Yoshi wasn't improved much at all.

And for whoever asked, no, I can't just 'do something else' with Falcon. Its not 'a different playing style', its a style that demands you be significantly better than a Pit player in order to beat them half the time.

 

[Chewy]

I think that it is fairly balanced it's just that some characters have a much steeper learning curve than others. Which pretty much means that it will take more skill to play those characters though...

Some characters are much easier to use but I think if someone masters one of the harder ones they could beat those who have mastered the easier ones. Although some characters remain pretty much unused(I have NEVER seen anybody play as jigglypuff online), so I guess I would have to somewhat agree with your argument Leve.

 

[Douten]

Yes tier exists and will always exist if you're going to compare characters. But no player in real life both have the same skill, even if they do they will react differently and learn a disadvantage/advantage to the other player. I'm not saying based on that you can use Yoshi and beat every pro there is, but based on that the game isn't so heavily tiered that people will only use certain character to win, especially in casual play.

If it's a style that requires you to be a lot better than Pit then so be it, find that style and use it. Or are you saying that style does not exist in Falcon? If so, then there must be other character he has advantage over. I do believe it's just a steeper learning curve that might be discouraging, of course tier counts too, but not so crazy that when played casual it'll still be a problem.

I play with Jiggly, but I don't main her so I don't play her often online, but I do sometimes : )

 

[Lugia]

Of course they can be good...for a Yoshi user. And THAT is the point. A Yoshi user with X amount of skill WILL NOT BEAT a Fox user with X amount of skill. In fact, they wouldn't even come close. And no, Yoshi wasn't improved much at all.

And for whoever asked, no, I can't just 'do something else' with Falcon. Its not 'a different playing style', its a style that demands you be significantly better than a Pit player in order to beat them half the time.

sometimes i feel that way when using ganon. its like the game is punishing you for picking a certain char half the time.

style? i dunno about falcon but when youre ganon you try chasing someone around a map. you dont have many options at your disposal.