r/smashbros • u/iamhungrybox • Jan 05 '14

Melee I am Hungrybox. I play Jigglypuff in SSBM, which made a lot of people upset over the years. Ask me Anything!

I figured I would do this since APEX 2014 is around the corner. I want to answer all sorts of questions about Smash and Life in general.

Disclaimer: I won't answer questions about Mango/his AMA. He's a father now and I'd rather not put any stress or dumb stuff on his family. The baby is cute as fuck too. I look forward to playing him and the other pros in a couple of weeks!

834 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

694 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

28

u/TheProdigyLol Jan 06 '14

Sakurai has said in countless interviews that he does not like the fact that there can be players who can master abilities at such a difficult, hard to discover level who will inevitably be more superior to those who have not discovered them yet. There's a 99% chance he won't decide to reimpliment air dashing, however the fall speed is a bit heavier in the new one than it is Brawl.

16

u/venividiikarma Jan 06 '14

Oh, okay. I knew Sakurai was pretty straight forward about how he didn't like how competitive melee got, just didn't know if it was anything further than that.

22

u/TheProdigyLol Jan 06 '14

Nah, there's yet to be a single release of him saying, "We don't want Smash 4 to resemble Melee", but based on his trends and thoughts about his game, there'd have to be a miracle or he'd have get amnesia (allbeit that may be the miracle I'm hoping for) for it to take any of the main features from Melee.

2

u/Cheesaurus Jan 06 '14

When/where did he say that? I'd really like to see a source on this.

1

u/TheProdigyLol Jan 06 '14

I don't know, man. Just links I've read on this subreddit for the past 3 months. I think that kotaku site for the most part. But it really wouldn't take any threads to figure this out, just based on his stance and ideals. He doesn't like what people did to the melee competitive scene, he doesn't like high skill ceilings, and he sure as hell hates when people don't use the stage-hazard maps and items that him and his team spent so long designing.

Here's a little note I'd like to throw in on one of the quotes that makes it painfully obvious that he dislikes the Melee scene.

Source: http://www.kotaku.com.au/2013/06/an-in-depth-chat-with-the-genius-behind-super-smash-bros/

9

u/xwatchmanx 0473-8029-5968 / LegendofSara Jan 06 '14

Except that quote doesn't make it clear he dislikes the Melee scene at all. And it's completely out of context without the full quote.

Mostly I don’t incorporate feedback like that. Basically, Smash Bros. is designed to be sort of targeted at the centre, intermediate players, and if you think of sort of a skill graph or something where if you’re targeting just the peak of that performance level, you’re targeting a very small group of people. We wanna avoid a situation where it becomes a game sort of like other competitive fighting games, where it’s only apreciated by a very small, passionate group of sort of maniac players. We definitely don’t want that sort of situation. It’s supposed to be a fun game for a wide variety of people.

But that’s not to say that I don’t appreciate very high-level competitive play, the type of very refined competitive gameplay that happens in other fighting games.

All he's saying is that he doesn't want Smash Bros. to be a niche type fighting game only enjoyable as a completely hardcore competitive experience: He wants it to be fun for everyone. That doesn't mean that he doesn't want a competitive scene to exist.

Sakurai also says here that he considers Melee to be the sharpest game in the series, citing how fast and skill-demanding it is, but laments that it wasn't more accessible. He certainly explains why he doesn't want to make a game as hardcore as Melee ever again, but never does he suggest that it's because he dislikes Melee's competitive scene.

1

u/TheProdigyLol Jan 06 '14

Just because you appreciate high level play does not mean that you want that of the game you made, especially when he literally says in the paragraph before it that he only wants his game to target the beginner and intermediate players.

He may appreciate the amount of skill that goes into high level fighting games, but if it means anything, I also appreciate the efficiency and war-strategy that Hitler went about with the gas chambers and War World 2 and such, but I would never implement something of that nature into my style of thinking. I can just appreciate the efforts he took to accomplish it all.

Just don't let hope jade the more likely possibilities of Smash 4. Smash 4 is going to be a great game, but Melee will always be more competitive.

2

u/xwatchmanx 0473-8029-5968 / LegendofSara Jan 06 '14 edited Jan 06 '14

I never said that he wanted to make Melee 2.0. The quotes I mention imply quite the opposite, in fact. He also never says he wants Smash Bros. To target beginners. He just says that he wants to target "the center, the intermediate" players (he doesn't say"only" either, just that he wants it accessible to intermediates). He wants it to be accessible, which is why Smash was so successful in the first place (along with the appeal of Nintendo characters fighting, of course).

All I was saying is that he doesn't hate the Melee competitive scene, the way you're entirely incomplete and out-of-context quote suggested. And no offense, trying to compare Sakurai's appreciation of the competitive fighting scene to an appreciation of Hitler's military genius is seriously ridiculous.

2

u/NPPraxis Jan 06 '14

Thing is, we went through this in the Brawl release lead up too. Sakurai talks in this manner. He talks about smash 4 the same way he did about brawl, and it's hard to explain that.

1

u/xwatchmanx 0473-8029-5968 / LegendofSara Jan 06 '14

I know you just said it was hard to explain, but... Try, please? I'm really curious.

1

u/TheProdigyLol Jan 06 '14

It wasn't a comparison, it was a definition of the word "Appreciation" and how your goals do not have to directly reflect what you appreciate. To me, I read all of these articles and find it to be greatly leaning in the "more similar to Brawl" favor, but if this is not how others see it, then so be it.

1

u/xwatchmanx 0473-8029-5968 / LegendofSara Jan 06 '14

Like I said twice before, I don't think it's going to be Melee 2.0 either. We're on the same page, in that regard.

That said, I'm not sure it's going to be more similar to Brawl either, just more of a middle ground. I don't have time to look it up now, but I remember reading a Sakurai interview a while back talking about how Brawl had a much more casual balance to better accommodate the more casual audience the Wii had.

But I guess we won't know until we try the final product.

2

u/TheProdigyLol Jan 06 '14

No you're right, that is a quote from Sakurai that I remember too, and if you're just arguing that it'll be a middle ground between the two, then that's exactly what I'm arguing as well. It will just be a less-defensive Smash with little to no tech skill (unless there are unintentional glitches like Wavedashing or Brawl's DACUS that allow for tech skill).

1

u/[deleted] Jan 06 '14

I really really hope that you're right on this and that it isn't just selective bias/wishful thinking.

1

u/xwatchmanx 0473-8029-5968 / LegendofSara Jan 06 '14

How would it be selective bias or wishful thinking? I'm not saying it means we'll get Melee 2.0. Quite the opposite, in fact, since the quote sadly makes it clear why we won't. I'm just showing the guy above that Sakurai doesn't hate the competitive Melee scene, the way his out-of-context quote suggests.

1

u/TheProdigyLol Jan 06 '14

You keep saying out-of-context quote, as if I would give you the direct link to the entire interview hoping someone as curious as you wouldn't go find the next two sentences below it. I didn't state the rest because I had deemed it irrelevant, since stating that he appreciates high-level play does not state anything more than his respect for other fighting games.