General Heinz

yoooooo so apparently this thread is sort of active? from what i can tell most bb/animu fighting game players in mi are more from the east side, but i go to msu so i live in the lansing area and suck really really bad at persona. i'm trying to get better but the only person i had to play moved out and he was pretty much just a street fighter player anyway (but would still shit on me with labrys...my fundamentals suck that bad T_T). is anyone in the state anywhere near there? i come from the melee community so netplay really isn't a thing i feel like i can learn shit from, especially because half the time i don't even understand how to verbalize how i get f***ed up so bad other than just "well obviously you're a scrub". i'm currently at home in kalamazoo where my family lives for the week so if anyone is in that area as well i would be down to play, but i'll be going back to east lansing in the near future. i main akihiko. get at meeee

Yeah, no smash in the UP either. I figure the only people there who would play video games are like college students at Tech, like a friend of mine. Most everyone is in the mitten.

Thanks. I noticed that the center of Michigan BB seems to be Detroit, but where/how often does Michigan/midwest hold tournies/"blazfests"? Planning to get straight up manhandled but I gotta start somewhere. Although I did order P4U too so it would be cool to start playing it with some experienced players right from the get-go.

Yeah, I figured there wouldn't be many smash players, but it's all good. That's what smashboards is for, right? XD Good to see someone else reppin' the captain though, he really is the only way to go if you wanna have a blast at melee. Seems to me like it's about the same on smashboards though--there's a BBCSE thread but other than that I doubt many smashers have touched BB. They're both excellent fighting games though.

I do play melee CF. Fuck brawl. Seriously though, I'm curious how many of you guys are pro-smash. I think playing melee Falcon is what gave me my appreciation for fighting games because he really takes prediction ability (rather than the top tiers like Fox and Falco who are fucking broken and approach braindeadedness--no johns). But yeah, viva la smash.

Yep, just added you. You play smash too?

Hey, I'm somewhat new to the BB community, and I live in Michigan. During the year I'm in East Lansing but for the summer I'm living at home in Kalamazoo. Saw the player list at the top and only saw one EL name, but if anyone not listed ever wants to play on 360 I really could use the practice offline rather than online so I can get some real feedback. I play Bang. Also always down to smash :P

Hey all, making an appearance again. I started posting here a while ago but didn't have EX since it wasn't out in the US but now I make my return. ..Still kind of suck at Bang though but I'm getting better!

Beautiful. Who did you main in smash Dacid? And if you had to just make a conjecture, what's the most fundamental aspect of Bang's metagame that should be mastered first by a beginning Bang main?

That's what I figured your distinction was. Dunno, that just seems arbitrary to me. I mean yes, it could be said that you can "hit your opponent an infinite number of times and they won't die" due to percentages instead of health bars, but firstly the absence of this isn't enough to put it into the platforming genre (only positive evidence of platforming is, not negative evidence of something else from a completely divergent genre), and secondly that's a huge oversimplification which you're probably aware of if you've played so much smash. That is, unless it's your idea of a winning strategy to continually spam low- to no-knockback moves on your opponent until they hit 999% because it's...fun that way? But otherwise, even mathematically speaking, it becomes impossible not to kill your opponent if they have high enough percentage because a) it becomes impossible to DI in such a way to reach the edge, even if you don't die off the blastline, and b) presumably you're actually trying not to let them get back, so such strategies as edgeguarding and edgehogging apply. Honestly I picked up BB to see if it would help me with my smash game, just based on the idea that there are similar themes in both games from the perspective of someone trying to win--proper spacing, judicious selection of moves to cover safe options, and committing to reliable punishes without overcommitting oneself and revealing a weakness as a result. I guess my point is that the goals and philosophy of the games are the same even if they differ in their means.

Yes FD is a giant platform, I get it. What I'm getting at is that the edge game is, in effect, a "ring out" condition that is already present in other fighting games (i.e. Virtua Fighter). Not to mention the fact that platforming games have distinctly different goals set up for the player and often aren't directly competitive (i.e. you win by beating a single other player-character), so this differs from fighting games and smash as well. This isn't an attempt at a flame war over genre definitions because ultimately it doesn't matter of course neither of us cares the other's opinion--I will of course continue to consider smash a fighting game, because it is, and you will continue to consider smash NOT a fighting game, which in your world it is not--but I'm trying to figure out your line or reasoning here. So define fighter. In my opinion you must just be being very restrictive about your definition. BB contains plenty of innovations that aren't in "classic" (meaning old) fighting games, but we still call it a fighter. Oh what grounds does an innovation make such a game not a fighter? When there's no health bar to determine winner? Why pigeonhole yourself into such an arbitrarily narrow concept of the genre? Just curious.

I mean, I guess you can compare it to a platformer just based on the fact that there are platforms (inb4 FD), and the movements are different given the fact that you can dash away from your enemy...but to be honest, all of the characters have diverse movesets (you could argue "clones!" but besides Roy, who basically sucks balls except for when Vectorman plays him, the other clones have very different playstyles from the "original" character) and there are enough advanced techniques (many character-specific) in the game there's a very high ceiling for skill. Plus there are other "fighters" that have ring-out-based systems that are perfectly analogous to smash's edge game--except for the fact that Melee's edge game is arguably the single largest contributor to its competitive depth. Just being a smasher here--call it what you want, but I think the core elements of fighting games are certainly there ("Survival!"). Don't get me wrong, I definitely think it's a "party game" too, so in getting that stigmatism it's not really wrong, I just don't see the real parallel to platforming. Simpler inputs means more accessibility, but it also means that other things are emphasized, namely timing (even down to one frame, as with any other fighter) and mindgames. Tres-player smash though...yeah, fuck that >.<

Melee's considered a platformer?

Thanks for the tips. I've just been getting beat up on netplay the past few days and it's started to reinforce better habits, even though they're kind of basic. I bet if I just remembered that 6C's gonna miss every time I'd lose way less >.< Also, what's the best thing to follow up with on the RC'd command grab? And did I hear Dacid started in smash? Who do you main? (not to go off-top or anything--so p.s. Bang is very manly harhar)

Joining the ranks of the Bang mains. I currently suck dick at this game though so I'll be needing all your help. Basically right now the only combo I can do is 5A>5B>2B>6C>j.D>236C>5C>6D. My question is this: How the fuck am I supposed to get out of a blockstring when the opponent actually knows what the hell they're doing? It's not that I can't see openings it's that I don't really know what Bang's best options are to get out of pressure against the various characters so I end up like spamming 5D or some shit and even getting fucked up with guard point. Soooo basically this is just a scrub post asking for help not being scrubby

I fucking hate Mario Party. And Mario Kart. Blue shells burn in hell.

Yeah, I hate that part too--the "moon gravity," as you so appropriately put it. Sure there were floaty characters in Melee, but due to the change in mechanics (like being able to air dodge whenever the fuck you feel like), you're almost never in a position where you have to tech, and if you try to, you'll probably air dodge. And in most situations since characters are so floaty you might as well jump out anyway. Plus, when Fox is considered floaty there has to be something wrong. I share basically all your most vehement opinions about Brawl, I just try to leave people their game if they want to play it I guess XD I dunno. The techniques they added don't really outweigh the techniques they removed in my opinion. I guess in some ways I have to automatically hate Brawl because CF got so disgustingly nerfed, but then again it wasn't just my character that that happened to--a lot of high-tier characters in Melee are just straight garbage in Brawl. CF, Fox, Sheik, Peach, Jiggs--the list goes on. In fact basically the only high-tier that didn't get nerfed was Falco apparently, but his play-style became completely different. I guess what mostly pisses me off is it really does seem like Nintendo has more interest in appealing to their stupid-ass "casual fans" when in doing so they betray much of their fanbase. This isn't by any means a smash-only complaint, either--a lot of franchises have just been bastardized now (like fucking Star Fox--and now they rerelease SF64 in "STUNNING 3D" 14 years later to make a few more bucks on it?). Maybe that's why I don't put much stock into Brawl. Then again, no one cared what Nintendo's original intent was with Melee when they decided they wanted to play it competitively. So I dunno. Do you think the tier list will change again after the MK ban takes effect, Shazam?

I think that's usually the main gripe people have though. It might not be a perfect argument on its own, but in removing the technical skill that's required to do things with such precision in Melee, people feel like if having more "skill" isn't what counts to win, it's harder to call it competitive. Coming after a game with such competitive potential as Melee, I can definitely understand that. I suppose you could say in doing so it emphasizes the mental aspect more, which is what a lot of people love most about fighting games anyway, and people have tried to argue that by saying it forces you to rely on spacing tactics more, but then that leads people to question what separates "spacing" from just plain camping. I was interested when I found out BB has negative penalty built into the game itself on purpose to discourage that type of avoidant play, and Melee I think was just built naturally in a way that prevented that (or maybe people just felt like they could kick ass harder so they approached--though some have argued that even in a game like Melee the most highly rewarded strategy can be not to approach sometimes). Combine that with the fact that for whatever reason there seems to be a poverty of good KO moves (a sweetspotted knee--if you can land it--doesn't kill until like 160% on FD from across the stage, I swear), matches just seem a lot less...concise. Also there's almost no way to argue that prat-falling wasn't a deliberate attempt to make the game less competitive. That's the part that's just downright frustrating for me. Sure there are advanced techniques that improve play greatly that are Brawl-specific, so Brawl certainly has its own toolkit of tricks, but I think people just feel Melee's toolkit was more effective at its own game. Then again, as always--to each his own. Only reason I'm picking fights about a completely unrelated series is cuz I can't play BB until next week XD

Yeah, Melee players are sort of a dying breed. I think what still attracts me to it even now though is just how much fucking depth is still there ten years later. The metagame continues to evolve. I'm not a well-known player either, but I hope to someday do well at a Melee tourney. And Falco's a good main to have of course. What part of Cali are you from? I'm sure there are lots of smash events still going on at least fairly close to you if you ever wanted to try going to one. West coast still has a lot of active players I think. It's the midwest scene that's really dying @__@

^ That. The advanced techniques of Melee should actually seem pretty familiar to most players of fighting games (or at least should make sense from a fighting-game perspective). It's all about reducing lag between attacks (thus L-cancelling and ledge cancelling) and keeping your opponent in hitstun to continue comboing (DI complicates this greatly, but there's a lot of depth to the DI system, so it's a good thing). Also I feel like BB confuses me sometimes because I can't only change my facing upon a cross-up. But I guess virtually all fighters are like that minus smash. So yeah...fuck yeah, smash. Who do you main, Shazam?

Yeah, the tourney ruleset for Brawl has a lot more restrictions out of necessity for taking care of Metaknight, but now that he's banned (starting January 9th I guess) those won't be necessary. In general though Brawl is just sort of a shitty competitive game compared to Melee, even if you don't consider the fact that they had to ban certain techniques. It's just not as fast-paced and I feel as though there aren't as many options. And you could say that fanboys have tried to make something out of Melee that it wasn't designed for, but it's ten years old this year, and after all that time I know so much has been discovered about the game that makes you realize how competitive (and truly balanced) it really is, even if it wasn't intentionally designed to be that way. For example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ayp7DdTZwc Even if you can say it wasn't designed to be competitive you can still see that it takes skill and the more skilled player wins (i.e. there was no gay shit that randomly screwed Darkrain over). But I guess I'm here to learn how to play BB, not promote smash ^__^;; No worries. I'm new myself. Welcome dude. Maybe once I get back to school where I left BB we can do some netplay to practice, scrub on scrub.

Battlefield and FD are at least completely "fair" in most people's minds, because they don't contain any random elements. Most other stages have at least some random elements, but the neutral stage list seeks to select stages that have a minimum of these I guess. Dream Land has the occasional wind, which can prevent recovery (or at least force a stock-winning edgehog), Yoshi's Island has that cloud that you can land on sometimes which can save you even if you were otherwise dead as fuck, and the platforms on Fountain move up and down slowly which fucks with a lot of characters' short hops (CF included). But all of these have limiting factors I guess, which is what makes them still "neutral"--the wind only comes up sometimes and can only kill you if you let yourself off the stage, the cloud is pretty small and thus hard to land on anyway, and the platforms on Fountain...well, I fucking hate those, but that's why I always ban Fountain against my opponent (tourney sets allow the winner of the first match of a best of three set to ban one stage he doesn't want his opponent to counterpick). Pokemon Stadium is arguably the most random of the still tourney-legal stages, since it has transformations that change the whole stage, but the starting form of the stage is considered very fair, and since the transformations suck for basically everyone (though they're thought to favor Fox and Falco), I guess it's considered your fault if you let yourself get killed during a particularly shitty one. Plus I think there are a lot of things that factor into what "fair" means. Characters with good up-throw chaingrabs on fastfallers (notably Peach) could be considered "broken" on FD since they can basically chainthrow their opponent across the stage until kill percent because there's no platforms above to tech on. On the flipside, Yoshi's Island is considered a really good Marth stage BECAUSE of the fact that there are platforms and because of the fact that their height complements the sweetspot on his sword nicely after he up-throws his opponent up there. That's why there has to be more than just FD.

^ Agreed. And to an extent the explosion of Melee's competitive scene was a fluke. Advanced techniques like wavedashing (which has many functions depending on character, but for many characters it functions mostly like BB's backstep, except it can be done in both directions without initiating a dash at all) were actually a total accident but were left in the game by the developers even though they had noticed these "glitches." And yeah, platforms and directions make the tech game different from that of BB, but techchasing is one of the best strategies against a lot of characters (one of Falcon's best pressure options against many of the high-tiers), and it's even further complicated by the fact that characters can tech off platforms to avoid a lot of combos. But you can techchase platform techs just the same, so that adds some to the depth of the gameplay. I think what frustrates people about smash who are more accustomed to traditional fighters like BB is that there are actually very few "guaranteed" combos. There come into play a lot of variables like weight, falling speed, percent, and all of those variables impact spacing and combos considerably. But I guess that's what I like about smash--the ability to improvise a combo on the fly, especially one that your opponent maybe could have avoided, but that you mindgamed him into eating anyway >:D Good shit. But yeah, Brawl was a disaster. I think it's reminded a lot of people what was good about Melee because they literally did a complete 180 on a lot of the tried and true techniques and strategies available in the past games. I understand what you mean, Manta, about how banning things from the game to make it more competitive seems like it should indicate that the game wasn't intended to be very competitive in the first place, but while in Melee there were only bans on stages (there actually aren't any banned techniques, contrary to popular belief, except ones that can freeze the game, and those are way too complicated to execute anyway), Brawl was so unbalanced as to warrant the banning of a character (Metaknight, if you guys didn't hear the anguished screams of the Brawl trolls reverberating through the interwebs the day he got the axe). But then again, it's not like that's never happened in any other fighting game before, so technically the necessity to ban anything shouldn't automatically indicate that a game is uncompetitive (buttt Brawl kinda is >.<). EDIT: Also, random sidenote, but I don't think it's entirely impossible to say that Melee has "high/low shenanigans." If by that you mean having to block high and low attacks differently, then Melee sort of has its own version of that. Depending on how much of your shield has been drained it may not cover your whole character when activated, so especially when under pressure, it's often advantageous to angle the shield up or down to avoid getting stabbed through it (C. Falcon notably gets raped by low attacks like Peach's down smash because his shield doesn't cover his feet very well).

Well banning items is sort of standard nowadays in tourney play, but we definitely don't just play on FD. Neutral stages are FD, Fountain of Dreams, Yoshi's Island, Dream Land 64, and Battlefield, then there are some counterpick stages. I kinda fucking hate FD too though. And yeah, I guess the games aren't similar at all, but I did in fact pick up BlazBlue to see if it could rival Melee in terms of speed. I don't know what game could ever really beat Melee in that area, but BB is still pretty fast. Brawl, however, will always be pretty sluggish for me, haha.

Just because of chain revolver?