Who you want in SSB:B

[jigglysama]

dancesinunderwear said:

Tier lists are the tool of the devil. They are stupid, as not only do they only work if both players are of exact equal skill, but they also only work when you are using tournament rules - 1 on 1 matches, no items, only a certain choice of stages.

Seriously, who in their right mind would play like that? "OMG we hav teh 1337 skillz! I liek to Wavedash and L-Shuffle n00bs! But don't even try to put me in a game with items, because its too random, and someone could be more lucky then me and then I'd lose and have to kill myself!".

I seriously hope Sakurai forces people to use items in Brawl's online mode, because that would make all of these so called 'expert's' skills useless and then I would laugh so much my brain would explode.

I totally agree with you. Every time I have to play my friends decide to turn items off and disable some stages (WAAAAH! Icicle Mountain and Brinstar Depths kills me every 5 seconds! Let's better play on Final Destination because it won't kill me and I won't die!!!!11!!)

Playing with Items are like a part that makes Smash Bros. different from other fighters.

[TrustTheFungus]

dancesinunderwear said:

Tier lists are the tool of the devil. They are stupid, as not only do they only work if both players are of exact equal skill, but they also only work when you are using tournament rules - 1 on 1 matches, no items, only a certain choice of stages.

Seriously, who in their right mind would play like that? "OMG we hav teh 1337 skillz! I liek to Wavedash and L-Shuffle n00bs! But don't even try to put me in a game with items, because its too random, and someone could be more lucky then me and then I'd lose and have to kill myself!".

I seriously hope Sakurai forces people to use items in Brawl's online mode, because that would make all of these so called 'expert's' skills useless and then I would laugh so much my brain would explode.

Well, of course they don't really matter if the players aren't of equal skill. Its not some voodoo fortune telling. It's just there to tell you which characters has the advantage. Just like if me and you were fighting. If I have a gun and you have a sword, I have the advantage. But if I don't know how to use a gun, you will probably win.

Some tournaments play with items, so I assume items are taken into consideration for the tiers. Even if they aren't I doubt they would effect the tiers very much.

Its true that they almost never use some items/stages, but if you paid money to enter a tournament would you want some random thing happening causing you to lose? In a battle between two closely skilled players one Heart Container could decide the winner. If you're just playing for fun go ahead and use any random items/stages, but when money is on the line most people want to make sure someone doesn't win because of luck.

And some of the stages aren't used because they give an unfair advantage to some characters. Slow moving characters would have a hard time beating a fast character once they get ahead on Hyrule Temple.

[Johans Nidorino]

The development of a new SSB game is a challenge for Sakurai and his team because they have to please (a) Nintendo fans who love Nintendo's history and games, and (b) skilled gamers who are experts at the fighting mechanics of SSB.

I hope the removal of a character isn't based solely on whether the character was bad or hard to control in SSBM.

[Dances in Undergarments]

trustthefungus said:

Its true that they almost never use some items/stages, but if you paid money to enter a tournament would you want some random thing happening causing you to lose? In a battle between two closely skilled players one Heart Container could decide the winner. If you're just playing for fun go ahead and use any random items/stages, but when money is on the line most people want to make sure someone doesn't win because of luck.

Hello, my name is Poker. Lots of people play me for large sums of money. And I'm completely random. But, if you've got teh mad skillz, you win anyway, because you adapt. Its not about removing every piece of chance that could possibly effect the outcome.Thats why people like me - its about the fun of the game.

I happen to think playing games for money is the retarded thing ever. Okay, thats a lie - if it was done in a fun way ("I bet you $5 you can't KO me with a Pichu using only thundershock!") that would be great, but "serious" gameplay for money is stupid. Honestly, (and I am fully aware of the irony of me saying this on a freaking message board about games), but the people who obsess this much really need to get a freaking life. Seriously.

[Fryguy64]

DiU... I agree entirely. It's the same with Pokemon (in which I have played tournaments).

I can see why some rules are implemented, for example - in Pokemon, if you could use legendary Pokemon then there'd be no reason to use anything else. And if you could have more than one of the same Pokemon then you would just pick a group of nigh-on unbeatable Pokemon.

But then you have the secondary rules - abitrary rules implemented to suck any opportunity for random actions from the game. These have the opposite effect as above - they make every game identical among skilled players, as they all use the same Pokemon with the same moves and the same traits anyway... removing Pokemon that might shake up this balance has gone some way to making battles an endless tedium of identical plays.

SSBM is the same. Removing random occurrences does nothing but suck the enjoyment you should have in a multiplayer title. Yeah, sure, you don't want to lose because of a random occurrence, but a good gamer should be aware of these random occurrences and take them into account in order to play better. Adding secondary, arbitrary rules in order to make the game more fair to the "elite" players is the best way to ruin a game.

Besides... can you really claim to be good at a game if you only play it with rules invented to remove chance? Sport doesn't work that way, and neither do most other kinds of games. Of course it sucks to lose because of chance, but sometimes a roll of the dice is enough to change something from a uniformly staged event into a game.

And no, for the record I have never seen a player use Peach to what I imagine is the best of her ability. But I HAVE seen players use other characters low on your list in a way that makes them virtually unbeatable. The tier system is inherently flawed, as SSB is largely a game of reflexes, familiarity and skill. There is nothing stopping a master with a bottom tier character beating a master with a top-tier character... and so there's no reason for the tier system to exist.

And does that mean if you pick a top-tier character then you are a worse player? After all, you've gone for the easy option rather than challenging yourself to win with a character that's not so easy to win with.

I hope Sakurai ignores "elite" players in favour of average gamers.

[Smashchu]

admin said:

And no, for the record I have never seen a player use Peach to what I imagine is the best of her ability. But I HAVE seen players use other characters low on your list in a way that makes them virtually unbeatable. The tier system is inherently flawed, as SSB is largely a game of reflexes, familiarity and skill. There is nothing stopping a master with a bottom tier character beating a master with a top-tier character... and so there's no reason for the tier system to exist.

Agreed. Teir are retarded. Since its depended on what the course is, number of players, what items are on, and how often they show up. So you cant really judge whos better. Im actually good with all the characters and win a match with any of them. Im best with Peach and have won matches with her in a tournament as well as with my friends. Im also skilled with Pikachu. Every character has a good trait, its a matter of where to look.

[Johans Nidorino]

So, how would Peach get "modernized"? By replacing the Peach Bomber? The other moves are not so out of date.

I'm also in favor of "randomness = fun". But when I find a challenger who doesn't use items (in a battle where they are enabled) and wins the battle, then that's somebody to respect . Both skills and luck are required in SSB as much as in Pokémon.

[TrustTheFungus]

dancesinunderwear said:

Hello, my name is Poker. Lots of people play me for large sums of money. And I'm completely random. But, if you've got teh mad skillz, you win anyway, because you adapt. Its not about removing every piece of chance that could possibly effect the outcome.Thats why people like me - its about the fun of the game.

I believe poker would have more rounds of play than SSBM. That would help evenly distribute the luck among players. And a lot of times there is no luck in poker. Luck only comes in to play if at least two people decide not to fold.

SSBM is the same. Removing random occurrences does nothing but suck the enjoyment you should have in a multiplayer title. Yeah, sure, you don't want to lose because of a random occurrence, but a good gamer should be aware of these random occurrences and take them into account in order to play better. Adding secondary, arbitrary rules in order to make the game more fair to the "elite" players is the best way to ruin a game.

They don't remove everything that's random. Just things that could dramatically affect the outcome of the game. The standard banned stages are Hyrule Temple, Fourside, Flatzone, Brinstar Depths, Icicle Mountain, Big Blue, Termina Bay and Yoshi's Island 64. As you can see several stages with random events are missing from that list. Tournaments that use items will normally not use healing items, hammers, stars and other items that dramatically affect the game.

I'm not quite sure why most tournaments ban all items. Most of them aren't unbalanced. The only thing I can come up with is the exploding boxes, barrels, and capsules. They sometimes can appear right when you do a smash attack and then you get killed in the explosion. I can understand having a problem with that. If your opponent gets a star or hammer you have a chance to get away. You don't even have a chance to react sometimes when the exploding items appear.

And no, for the record I have never seen a player use Peach to what I imagine is the best of her ability. But I HAVE seen players use other characters low on your list in a way that makes them virtually unbeatable. The tier system is inherently flawed, as SSB is largely a game of reflexes, familiarity and skill. There is nothing stopping a master with a bottom tier character beating a master with a top-tier character... and so there's no reason for the tier system to exist.

But you said in your other post that Bowser needed improved. I assume that means you believe Bowser isn't as good as other characters. If you believe that Character A is better than Character B then you believe in tiers.

[Smashchu]

The thing is that is you put items on low, the chanes of an item apearing infront of you during an attack are less then 1%. Plus add in that you almost nmever charge in a tournament match so I would assum its even lower then. If you manage to hiut one then suck it up and buy a latto ticket.

[TrustTheFungus]

smashchu2 said:

The thing is that is you put items on low, the chanes of an item apearing infront of you during an attack are less then 1%. Plus add in that you almost nmever charge in a tournament match so I would assum its even lower then. If you manage to hiut one then suck it up and buy a latto ticket.

Yeah, I don't think it could happen enough to really matter most of the time. But it is a reasonable complaint. I hope SSBB will let you turn off boxes, barrels, and/or their exploding versions. Then maybe more people would use items in tournaments. It'd be really cool if you could change the lenght of time items last, too. You lower the stars time if you think it would make it more balanced, or you raise the time of the hammer to have a battle with never-ending hammers! Maybe even change the chances of each different Pokemon coming out of the Pokeball. You could have an all Legendaries battles, or make it a 90% chance of getting Goldeen.

[Dances in Undergarments]

That would be cool. Ridiculously complicated, but cool nonetheless.

[Fryguy64]

I believe some characters are better than others... but that doesn't mean I believe in tiers. I definitely disagree with the tiers you presented.

And you know why? Because I'm better with some characters than I am with others. That's not abnormal - that's what we all do all of the time... for most things.

You can only make tiers in completely statistic based games (eg. RPGs) because the math is there to back you up. But you can still be shaken by a random encounter, and the best part is - there's some degree of skill in foresight (especially in Pokemon). You're never going to beat a Metagross with a Pichu... but you can still get by with certain underused Pokemon if you've got the mad skillz.

On an unrelated note, the Diamond/Pearl Pokemon are looking awesome!

[Dances in Undergarments]

Yep, and the icing on the cake will be if Pocchama follows through with its supposed translated name of 'Rookie Fighting Bird' and becomes a big, fighting emperor penguin. That would be awesome, and would definately justify me starting with him (I always pick the Water starter, but never has a freaking Monkey with a fire butt been there to tempt me).

And Elekible pwnz Elctabuzz in every single way. Look at the damn thing!

[Johans Nidorino]

dancesinunderwear said:

Yep, and the icing on the cake will be if Pocchama follows through with its supposed translated name of 'Rookie Fighting Bird' and becomes a big, fighting emperor penguin. That would be awesome, and would definately justify me starting with him (I always pick the Water starter, but never has a freaking Monkey with a fire butt been there to tempt me).

And Elekible pwnz Elctabuzz in every single way. Look at the damn thing!

I foresee a freaking ugly final evolved form for Pocchama, but let's hope I'm wrong. Shouldn't it be Water/Ice?

Imagine the number of pocket monsters we'll see coming out of Poké Balls in SSBB... It would be cool to have a double Poké Ball item as a reference to Double Battles and as a way to see couples like Latios+Latias and Volbeat+Illumise.

[TrustTheFungus]

admin said:

I believe some characters are better than others... but that doesn't mean I believe in tiers. I definitely disagree with the tiers you presented.

And you know why? Because I'm better with some characters than I am with others. That's not abnormal - that's what we all do all of the time... for most things.

You can only make tiers in completely statistic based games (eg. RPGs) because the math is there to back you up. But you can still be shaken by a random encounter, and the best part is - there's some degree of skill in foresight (especially in Pokemon). You're never going to beat a Metagross with a Pichu... but you can still get by with certain underused Pokemon if you've got the mad skillz.

But that's all tiers are. They are saying that Fox and Falco are better than Marth, Sheik, and Peach. And Marth, Sheik, and Peach are better than Falcon, IC, Dr. Mario, Samus, Jigglypuff, Mario, and Ganondorf. Even if you believe that all characters are perfectly balanced except Bowser, that is still a tier. Tiers are just a system of displaying which characters are currently believed to be better than others. I don't believe that their order is 100% correct, but I think that most the characters are in the correct tier(Top, High, Middle, Low, Bottom).

The tiers aren't based on a single person's ability's. They're based on using each character at the greatest know level. I'm horrible with Fox. I'd probably do better with Mewtwo than I would with Fox. That doesn't mean Mewtwo is better than Fox. It means I really suck with Fox.

And you can make tiers for games that aren't completely statistic based. I don't need a calculator to discover Marth is better than Bowser. With characters that are closer to being balanced it becomes a bit more difficult, but that's why I normally choose to ignore the order of the characters in each specific tier.