Until a couple of weeks ago, I didn't know there was a competitive fighting game community. Yes, really. Until a couple of days ago, I didn't know that Melee, which I played on my little brother's GameCube ages ago, was one of those games.
I've been reading some threads here and they're all about Melee.
Can you explain to a newbie in this genre why that is?
If I were to try to become good, what are communities in which I can try to find advice? Is there something like the Day9 daily for Smash 4? Or is it simply not played competitively?
And lastly, do 3DS players get to fight Wii U players online? And do both games run at 60 FPS?
I believe 3DS and Wii u are two sperate games. You can't play cross platforms. Though I own neither of them so I could be wrong.
I don't believe there is anyone streaming something like a day9 daily for smash but there are guides and streams around. For smash 4, you could check out ZeRo.
Usually you would want to learn about the game through smashboards forums and guides, SleepyK's guide, and some known youtube videos showcasing the depth of melee.
Here is what my local smash group suggests :
Here's a guide for getting into the game and a list of all the stuff to work on!: http://goo.gl/UxjWRa (ITS UPDATED REALLY FREQUENTLY) For anyone who hasn't seen it, WATCH THE DOCUMENTARY :
Now as to why melee is still a thing that's a long story, I suggest you watch the documentary and see for yourself!
Tough to explain why melee is still the most popular competitive smash game without sounding like I'm hating on smash 4 (I'm not I like the game). Essentially melee is super fast and exciting and fun and timeless and awesome and we still love it after all these years. But if smash 4 is your cup of tea go for it! There are a ton of smash 4 and melee guides (both general and character specific) on youtube.
It gives a great overview of the history of competitive Melee and played a huge role in the game's revival.
In short, Melee is currently the biggest because it has the most depth due to a combination of mechanics and time. There are very advanced, hidden mechanics in the game that are super hard to execute and string together, but when done, the game gets played at a very fast speed with many intricacies. These skills have been developed over many years of competition through a national scene that has had its ups and downs (Brawl overtook it for a while). Smash 4 may overtake Melee if it continues to become more popular, but Melee currently holds the largest fanbase.
I suggest taking a look at /r/smashbros. There's a ton of links over there that's help you find resources, tournaments, and your local scene. I highly suggest showing up to a local gathering and asking for advice on getting into competitive Smash. Smashers for all five games are usually very friendly in person and are very encouraging towards new players. I've only played with competitive players twice, but everyone I played constantly gave me advice on how to improve, showed lots of excitement when I did something right, and invited me back.
If you want to see some competitive Smash 4 you should check out twitch.tv/vgbootcamp they stream a Smash 4 tournament every Tuesday. A lot of the players are local to the Maryland/Virginia area but sometimes people like Mew2King will show up and play too. They also do melee and Smash 64 tourneys too.
Hi SixStrings! There's two different Sites in the German Community for Smash input. I'm active on Germansmash.de, which is focused on melee and has players that were in the community longer, and there is Smashlabs.de for Smash4 content. You should try finding a Smash (melee or Smash4) Group on facebook for your city or Bundesland! (that's just for german content, there are more sites for international/american stuff)
to try and answer your questions: Can you explain to a newbie in this genre why that is? - Melee is quite different from Brawl and Smash4, so there is still a large following, depending on where you look you will find much more Melee than Smash4 content. Liquid for example has only picked up Melee players!
If I were to try to become good, what are communities in which I can try to find advice? Smashboards.com Is there something like the Day9 daily for Smash 4? Or is it simply not played competitively? Smash 4 is being played competetively. There is nothing like the Daily though. We have a couple of rather unregular "shows" but not very much. I don't have Smash4 so i'm not as involved with the scene.
And lastly, do 3DS players get to fight Wii U players online? And do both games run at 60 FPS? No. Yes (I believe so, dunno about 3DS though).
Melee is so popular and fun because it's both a party game and a super fast intense competitive game that offers a unique situation every single game you play. You don't have the boring "I did this 500 times" thing that you get while playing a regular starcraft game. It has a plethora of options in almost every situation with which you can be rewarded or punished. It's 14 years old but it's only growing in popularity despite it's age.
I've seen many Youtube videos of Smash WiiU being played in local tournaments. A lot of these are also live-streamed on Twitch.
Overall, I think the game is still new but has potential. Whether or not it's actually "superior" to Melee I don't know - the only bad thing I've seen so far is the lack of control customization and the hard-to-use wheel instead of D-pad.
So, to post a quick bit of opinion, might overlap with what has already been said but...
The reason Melee has been around for so long is simply the depth of the game. It's like Brood War in the sense that the game is so hard to play perfectly that nobody ever will, so there are always options for movement, attack, response, etc that can always be tightened up by playing better, and it creates a weird subset of mindgames considering you can often go for the sub-optimal response just because it's not expected, and people often aren't fast enough to punish a sub-optimal option if you used it at the right time.
Brawl was specifically designed to take out elements of Melee that made it competitive, such as wavedashing, dash-dancing, L-cancelling, far less important DI, including stupid game mechanics like tripping, etc. At that point it just came to a matter of predictability that couldn't be altered and people figured out Brawl really quickly. Overall, Brawl was a slower game and pretty much was designed to not be competitive, what with all of the contention between competitive Melee and Nintendo back in the day.
I feel like Smash 4 is just another iteration of Brawl. The game is much slower than Melee, and more importantly, it has far less advanced mechanics (which eliminates a large amount of options/decisions). The game speed also encourages a lot more camping/defensive play, etc, which really wears on it's watchability. I personally feel it's only a matter of time before the game gets figured out and the competitive scene starts to die off. At this point it is kind of a competitive game considering it's the new Smash game, and since there's already an established infrastructure for other Smash titles. Honestly, I don't see it sticking around for more than a couple of years simply due to a lack of depth and a defined skill ceiling.
This is all my opinion though and I know a lot of Brawl/Smash 4 supporters get mad at Melee people for expressing their opinion, but I honestly just don't see Smash 4 sticking around the way Melee has. Even during Smash 4's release, Melee has grown in popularity immensely. It's like if Brood War died and then came back again, they released SC3 and Brood War still continued to grow despite the new competition.
If you want to start getting into Melee or anything competitive, look around on Smashboards and maybe facebook for groups of people that meet up and play in your area. Around me, if I were willing to travel ~40 miles, I could get to 3 or 4 Smash events per week and I am in a substantially weak area for competitive Smash. I'd imagine being where you are, you could at minimum find some good people to practice with and start getting more into the game.
If not, there's always options like Dolphin that will allow you to play online via emulation.
I couldnt find a "simple questions simple answers" thread on Smash 4, so I guess Ill ask here:
I played Lucina all night tonight with my friend, and found out I can do a quick succession combo similar to Diddy or Fox neutral a-spam. I tried to replicate and look it up online but I couldnt find it. Can anyone help me out here, or at least have an idea on what Im talking about.
On February 09 2015 19:26 Emnjay808 wrote: I couldnt find a "simple questions simple answers" thread on Smash 4, so I guess Ill ask here:
I played Lucina all night tonight with my friend, and found out I can do a quick succession combo similar to Diddy or Fox neutral a-spam. I tried to replicate and look it up online but I couldnt find it. Can anyone help me out here, or at least have an idea on what Im talking about.
Lucina's jab is only comprised of two hits, which would be referred to as jab1 and jab2. She can't go into a multi-hit jab state like Fox and Diddy can, unfortunately. Just press A to go from jab1 to 2 then 1 and repeat.
The only multihit attacks Lucina has is her Side B Special, with the last hit ending with the Down (Green) variant, which does multiple quick stabs in front of her. Is that what you mean?
@OP SixStrings TL picked up a melee team, that's why smash is here is all melee. (Though I do wonder, are other Smash games welcome here?)
A lot of people prefer melee, though there are many who also prefer smash 4. At APEX 2015, a huge yearly tournament, there were 1024 melee entrants (capped), and 800+ Smash 4 players.
There is a competitive scene for smash 4 and it's doing fine right now and has a lot of potential. They both have different styles and different focuses so pick the one you like! Be careful though there is a lot of flaming and rotten eggs who ostracize one game over another (Think LoL vs Dota or SC2 vs Lol/Dota or even SC2 vs BW).
Check smashboards, it's the equivalent of TL for smash.
If you want an EXCELLENT stream with a top player, watch twitch.tv/1fow1
He's great, plays every character, entertaining, professional, friendly, talks with EVERYONE in the chat and constantly reads it, he constantly talks and teaches about the game and gives "showcase tutorials" for each character.
If you sub to him, you can even play him for practice on stream and ask for tips. (Lots of pros are doing this right now).
There isn't really coaching set up for smash yet, but you can play them on stream for practice (some even offline).
I'm a player who's played each smash game casually and competitively and tried learning each one at some point or another, and I prefer Smash 4, though Melee is good too.
There's many reasons why Melee is slightly preferred over Smash 4.
1. Smash started out as a fast paced, combo heavy game and required a good amount of technical skill (physical inputs, timing, etc.). Melee followed this and refined it. Brawl was a huge departure in another direction, but had some significant flaws (though it was still played competitively up til it started slowing down partially due to PM being out and Smash 4 coming out sometime), though I do say I enjoy watching and playing brawl as well. However this created what I see as a huge misconception/assumption in the Smash community that a slower paced game is a less competitive one. There are very healthy competitive fighting games that aren't fast paced like Melee is (basically 2D anime fighters vs non 2D anime fighters), but since Brawl was flawed, a lot of people just associated slower pacing with non-competitiveness.
2. Melee is faster paced and therefore skill is more easily understood and recognized by spectators, even if they don't know much about Smash, where as a slower game like Smash 4 will be harder for newbies to recognize a good player from a bad one. For a proven example of this, think LoL/DotA and how people love watching and cheering for them because of frequent kills (quantifiable displays of winning or skill), where as in starcraft 2 it's harder for them to understand if someone is ahead or better than the other, aside from seeing what army wins what battle and who has more stuff on the map. You could think of BW for this, where it's easier to see a player is better by how he moves his units (looks like each unit has a mind of its own), or how fast his APM is.
3. It's more traditional and its history is rich and has well known storylines and it's proven itself over the years, similar to how young gamers in Korea will still play BW in PC bang.
4. Melee is "harder", meaning you can be punished very easily and the skill gap between players (measured in how well you do, AKA stocks pretty much) is larger. Even at low level, you can edgeguard easily and do cool things. This is like BW how you could focus on a couple cool builds or learn to micro 1-2 units well and feel pro doing it, where as SC2/Smash 4 lowered the physical stress and reduced the technical skill needed (I prefer this, it lowers the physical barrier). Smash 4 is less punishing but the difference isn't that large (though the slower speed does make it harder to punish as well). However Smash 4 does also have potential as with any game, it is still discovering new cool and useful advanced techniques and players are learning to combo better and longer and edgeguard better and grab kills faster.
5. Mainstream journalism, media, etc. arguably favor Melee a lot more than Smash 4, mainly again due to its long history and it still being played and growing after 13 years.
First there is the Smash Bros documentary (which is really more of a Melee documentary, but calling it smash bros helps instill the idea that Melee is the only "true" smash). Second, Smash 4 has come out in a more modern culture, where people are more spoiled than ever in terms of living in the Information Age. Back then people played games and put effort into it to figure things out and adapt. Now a days, whether it be SC2 or LoL or DotA or now even Smash 4, all people do is complain, bandwaggon, and spread all this negative attention to their own game, instead of loving it and showing others why they should love the game too.
Also, what you can call the failure of Brawl (at least in terms of surpassing Melee in the long run) has significantly impacted Smash 4's growth. In addition to people in the smash/fighting game community being much more casual than the starcraft community, smashers overall lack a meaningful understanding of their own game, let alone another iteration in the same series. Nicknames for Smash 4 such as "Brawl 2.0" (which can be seen as bad or good depending on who you are) only enforce the idea to melee players or players who are introduced to competitive smash via melee media that Smash 4 is so inferior that it's widely dismissed, and thus they themselves should not spend any significant amount of time checking it out. It's sort of like a "fool me once..." deal where long time Melee vets tried out Brawl, eventually switched back, and now don't even want to try out Smash 4.
Another reason that just makes this worse is the very frequent misunderstandings, misinterpretations, and even mistranslations of what the game director Sakurai has said. Some misquotes are things such as "Smash 4 isn't made to be competitive", which further discourages Melee players from even considering trying out Smash 4. It's unfortunate but the lack of knowledge in general of smash players is a huge factor; many won't be able to even explain or defend why they don't like Smash 4, because they know so little about it, which is worsened by how new the game still is and even Smash 4 players are still learning many new things. Unfortunately the Smash community is more loud mouthed and less mature than say the Starcraft community, or at least here on Team Liquid, so there is a much larger conflict between games, and lots of flaming which causes people to only close their minds even more and keep playing their Melee or their Smash 4.
Smash 4 took Brawl and refined it, and also combined elements from both Melee and Smash 64. The balance and character design in Smash 4 is great, while it's still decently fast paced and while the movement options aren't as crazy or as frequent as Melee/PM, there are still here and there and some character focus have a bigger emphasis on that if you like that and others have less. Some characters in Smash 4 feel very Melee-like, while some feel Brawl-like. It's an interesting Smash game and my favorite.
But if you want a more fast paced chaotic game where each player does adrenaline inducing intricate dancing, and where there are a lot less matchups to learn which allows you to focus on learning fewer matchups deeply, and you like opportunities for big momentum swings that allow comebacks, pick Melee. If you want a game with more variety in gameplay (anything between slow and fast matchups) and better balance (Melee has ~6 top characters, but about half the roster or ~13 are viable, but Smash 4 arguably every character is good and currently all 50 are viable, with only ~10 of those characters being bad or questionable choices) and more focus on footsies, reading your opponent's mind, and spacing (also intricate but slower, more careful movements), and you like a ton of variety in matchups where not everything is super hammered out, play Smash 4.
(The parallel between the Smash/SC comparison isn't 1:1. BW while focusing on mechanics/technical stuff is actually more of a tug of war, while SC2 is faster paced and momentum switches easily and quickly.)
Edit: Huge wall of text lol... sorry for it being so long, hope you might find some of it informative. This is pretty much my comprehensive understanding, experiences, and perception of all things pertaining to the state of the game and community of Smash, specifically the two most relevant right now (Melee and Smash 4).
On February 09 2015 22:32 Willard42 wrote: Check out VGBootCamp on Youtube and on Twitch, they constantly stream tournaments of each game (Melee. Project M, and 4)
Unfortunately VGBootCamp dropped Project M indefinitely
Some of these reies have been so thorough, helpful and friendly, that I would be doing you a disservice just dropping a one-liner on my phone. I'll reply again when I have my PC set up. Until then, thanks a lot guys!
On February 09 2015 19:35 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: and more focus on footsies, reading your opponent's mind, and spacing (also intricate but slower, more careful movements)
Brilliant post. I prefer Melee, but agree with you on pretty much everything you said, except this part.
People used to use this same argument when comparing SC2 to BW and I don't believe that it's true at all, and it irks me a bit. Even though BW and Melee are more mechanically demanding, they still require just as much if not more strategy/mind games/spacing than their sequels. Just because Smash 4 lacks the mechanical aspect of Melee does not necessarily mean that it requires more mindgames and reads.
It's just that in Smash 4, mind games are happening at a pace in which a new player can follow them and understand at surface level what's going on without being too invested in the game. When I listen to Mango analyze one of his tournament sets on his YouTube channel, he explains each complex read and decision him and his opponent are making at breakneck speeds and it just blows my mind that he can play so fast and make so few mechanical errors which could easily cost him a stock while thinking about the game on a whole different level.