
The Unbalanced Design of Super Smash Bros - wgx
http://forrestthewoods.com/unbalanced-design-of-super-smash-brothers/
======
apetresc
I'm not sure I agree with his interpretation of his own results. By my
reckoning, 4 of the top 5 characters have been continuously in the top 5 for
the entire 12-year duration (with Jigglypuff the sole exception and by FAR the
most interesting data point in the whole thing).

Sure, some of the bottom places shuffled around a bit in the intervening time,
but if SSBM is anything like the other competitive games I play, that's
probably only because the people making the list don't really have strong
opinions about them. Every competitive player is going to pay attention to
who's #1-5 in the metagame, but do you really think they devote as much
attention to whether Bowser should be #25 or #26? They probably pick those on
a whim based on whatever recent experience they had.

That explains the volatility at the bottom rankings. I don't think it's
because the pros are plumbing the depths of the game to find new strategies to
move a character from second-worst to third-worst.

~~~
agibsonccc
You would be surprised. I was apart of the smash community for a long time. I
can attribute part of this to people being very attached to characters and
like what's been mentioned with the way the game was created (catering to
"casuals") much of the tier listings would change over time due to new bugs or
people just trying to push the limit for certain characters.

We can see artifacts of this with the combo videos competitive players would
put out.

While I agree competition and the metagame was the real objective (like in
CCGs for example) people did like looking in the crevices for that next thing
that could give their character that extra wave dash or what have you. I dare
say that's what made smash so much fun.

~~~
sopooneo
Could you explain what is meant by the "meta-game"? The author explained a
little, but I'm still not clear and have never played myself. Was there an
actual game-within-a-game? Or was there just a style of play where everyone
agreed to eliminate all outside assets and play with only each character's
native powers?

~~~
kpreid
The metagame (or "the meta") is the long-term game in which the moves are "I
am going to play this character/deck and practice/use these strategies" \--
decisions you make _at the beginning, or before, play starts in the base game_
and the rounds are complete games of the base game.

Learning new information about the base game (or it being updated by the
developers) changes what moves are best in the metagame — but as this
knowledge propagates through the player base, the probability distribution of
what-you-will-be-facing changes, which _also_ changes the best choices of
meta-moves.

For an example of why metagames are more than just knowledge about the base
game, suppose that we have a fighting game with character A (or a CCG with a
player-designed deck A) who is well-rounded and B who doesn't do so well in
most cases but is good at beating A. Then even if the base game doesn't change
at all and nobody learns a new trick, B is a good choice _if and only if lots
of other people are playing A_ — meaning you have a dynamical system.

A lively metagame keeps things interesting because players keep doing new (or
dusting off old) things to defeat the current things, rather than sticking to
what works — because "what works" changes. It avoids the problem of "X is
best, so either you ignore other parts of the game or you are deliberately
playing suboptimally".

------
tuxidomasx
I remember playing SSBM in a college environment before Youtube. It was
interesting to see how the discovery and exploitation of certain moves and
abilities on campus over time shifted who people would use.

One day somebody discovers the "Falcon Knee" and destroys everyone. Suddenly
people are picking C.Falcon a little more often. Or the sweet spots with
Marth. Suddenly Marth is picked a lot more. Same with Luigi's neutral A drop
kick/foot. Or Peach's down-smash on a slope.

I think the relative lack of shared video footage of other people playing
contributed to a lot of tier-changing within isolated groups. Moves are kinda
discovered on accident, get refined, and ultimately change the dynamics of the
game a little.

~~~
organsnyder
I remember the same thing happening. While SSM was out by the time I was in
college, my friends and I played a lot of the N64 version. When one of us
really discovered Jiggly Puff—and learned how to pull off her "sleeper"
move—it began to spread around. Interesting to see a parallel dynamic
happening in Melee.

------
CocaKoala
By the way, if anybody is interested in this article and wants to read more
about competitive game design and competitive game balance, they should check
out Dave Sirlin[1], a former competitive fighting game player and game
designer who's written a lot on the subject. He has an article on how he
rebalanced Puzzle Fighter, and an article for each character that he wrote for
rebalancing Street Fighter II Super Turbo HD Remix, with some really
interesting insights about what makes a character powerful or balanced or
unbalanced.

[1]: [http://www.sirlin.net/article-archive/](http://www.sirlin.net/article-
archive/)

------
debacle
One thing that this graph doesn't capture is that, especially for Peach, Ice
Climbers, and Mewtwo, a single player has brought each of those characters
into the limelight.

These kinds of graphs don't translate well into MOBAs because the team size
(5), character count (100+) and drafting mode (ban/pick/ban/pick) tend to
create very stale metagames if the game is not rebalanced from time to time.
That said, both Riot and Valve have made some pretty crazy balance decisions
in the last 12 months.

~~~
forrestthewoods
Author here! A lot of folks have said exactly that. I'm gonna work on a 2nd
post that talks about the 'why' a bit more. There does seem to be a strong
correlation between a characters rise and specific players who played them.

That post will hopefully come soon. Thanksgiving makes it a little difficult
to get out quickly as I'd like.

~~~
pyrocat
I'm hoping to see Yoshi come up in the ranks because of aMSa.

------
stonemetal
Isn't shuffling in the ranks a sign of balance? Lets say the game is
unbalanced such that Mario wins 100% of the time, and Luigi wins against
everyone except Mario. Then I would expect the ranking to list Mario as #1 and
Luigi as #2. They would never change positions because there is no question
about if Luigi should rank higher than Mario or lower than some other
character.

~~~
jjaredsimpson
That's assumes perfect information and perfect play. As new strats and
counters are discovered the relative power of characters shifts over time.

Balance doesn't have to do with changes in perceptions of character strength.
A game is usually said to be balanced if there is a large selection of
characters that are considered viable for tournament play.

~~~
swagasaurus-rex
I think this distinction is important. Balance is about the diversity of
choices players can make.

In nature, there are balancing mechanisms, but there is no balance. If one
organism learns how to overwhelm another, it often spells the extinction of
the weaker organism.

In games, however, if one character is unviable, then the game is said to be
unbalanced, which naturally leads to discontent with the portion of the player
base that likes that character. Balance is a battle against the natural
entropy that generates tier lists or food chains, because it is a human
preference, not a trend or a law of nature.

------
ChuckMcM
It would be wonderful if more game designers took the basic premise to heart,
which is that the "balance" is antithetic to "interesting". Much of what made
early World of Warcraft worlds compelling was the lack of balance on character
capabilities. And while minmaxers would find a combo that was hard to beat,
often alternatives could be found without large scale nerfs and buffs. Smash
brothers is a lot of fun in this regard, since my daughter regularly trounces
me I can try different strategies over time and discover things about the
character I'm playing that improve it against massive failure. That _journey_
is much more interesting than whether or not Zelda is more powerful than
Sheik.

~~~
CocaKoala
> "balance" is antithetic to "interesting"

That's an unusual opinion, would you mind explaining more? Unbalanced games
tend to, in my view, be less interesting, because imbalance removes choices
from the game.

For example, if you changed the rules to Rock-Paper-Scissors so that paper no
longer beats rock, that's not an interesting game anymore. Paper is now
clearly the worst choice, since it has no chance of winning, and Rock is now
clearly the best choice, since it will draw in the worst case.

Put another way: There's nothing about a balanced game that keeps you from
going on the journey that you feel is interesting. But with an balanced game,
that journey is mandatory; with an imbalanced game, it's superfluous. You're
playing strictly sub-optimally, which is a fine choice, but it's hard for me
to see how it's more interesting.

~~~
ChuckMcM

       >  would you mind explaining more? 
    

Sure, we're using a slightly different meaning of balance I suspect. In the
case of Smash Brothers, and World of Warcraft, the 'actors' each have
different capabilities, some are offensive, some are defensive. In both of
these cases the abilities can be "enhanced" by in game power ups.

Thus if you are playing actor 'A', and I am playing actor 'B', we state the
game 'balanced' if every offensive action that 'A' has, has an equivalent
defensive action on 'B's part, and vice versa. If an actor A has offensive
capabilities that can overpower every other actors's defensive capability,
then that actor is referred to as being 'over powered'.

What the original article discusses, and I certainly resonate with, is that
there is a third balancing factor which is the environment and sometimes more
subtle properties of an actor which are not specifically 'offense' or
'defense' related.

So to re contextualize that in terms of the argument you put forward, rock-
paper-scissors is balanced at the actor level and the environment is
irrelvant, so it plays the same way in all environments and is boring. If you
add the environment, say underwater paper becomes mushy and can't be cut by
scissors, or in volcanic environments paper catches on fire and can't wrap
rocks, Etc, you create a more interesting game. One in which a strategy that
works well in one environment, fails in another environment.

I realize that is a bit contrived, I was trying to stay with your use of r-p-s
as the analogy which is imperfect to the task.

The short version is that widening the problem space from which you have to
create a winning strategy makes it more interesting to me. That is done by
spreading the notion of 'balance' beyond just matching actor skills to include
effects from the environment as well.

~~~
CocaKoala
>if you are playing actor 'A', and I am playing actor 'B', we state the game
'balanced' if every offensive action that 'A' has, has an equivalent defensive
action on 'B's part, and vice versa

But that's not what balance is at all. I'm going to go to some fighting games
here, because I really like them and it's an easy way for me to contextualize
balance. I apologize if I'm referencing a game you're not familiar with, but
I'll try to be clear.

Guilty Gear (and its various sequels; right now I'm thinking of Guilty Gear XX
Reload ^ Core, but that's super long to type) is generally considered to be a
fairly balanced game, but the cast of characters is incredibly diverse. Venom
can place pool balls on the screen in various formations, and if he hits them
with any attack, then they bounce around and hit the opponent. Zappa can
summon random creatures to give him access to new attacks (seeded by the
clock, which skilled players can use to their advantage). Eddie has a
secondary effect where he does one attack when you press a button, and a
second attack when you let go of the button. Chipp has teleports and a triple
jump that lets him move around the stage quickly.

You can't say that each character in Guilty Gear has an equivalent defensive
action for every tool that every other character has, because there are just
so many characters and so many different tools. Instead, each character has a
generalized set of defensive options: a double jump and air dash for mobility,
an attack that has upper body invincibility (and so can be used as a defensive
move against air attacks), an attack from blockstun that has brief
invincibility but costs a small amount of meter, and a rechargeable 'burst'
that can break out of an opponent's combo. So now, even though every character
has a myriad array of ways to attack you and there's no way to say "My burst
is equal to Venom's pool balls, my dead-angle attack is equal to Zappa's dog,
my anti-air is equal to Chipp's triple jump", the game is still overall
balanced.

I would say that your example of R-P-S with stages is still unbalanced; in
underwater environments, there's no situation where you don't want to choose
rock. In volcanic environments, there's no situation where you don't want to
choose rock. The addition of the stage has removed all the strategy from the
game.

> The short version is that widening the problem space from which you have to
> create a winning strategy makes it more interesting to me.

This part, I absolutely agree with; I feel like you just took it in sort of a
weird direction. You don't want to give everybody an equivilent set of tools,
because that doesn't widen the problem space at all (because the characters
are all equal, so the choice doesn't matter). And adding in effects from the
environment is a way to widen the problem space, but certainly not the only
one; you can go the Guilty Gear route and make sure that the system itself
gives characters some good ways to get out of trouble, and then give each
character an incredibly diverse set of offensive options and the problem space
is sufficiently widened that way.

~~~
ChuckMcM

       > This part, I absolutely agree with; I feel like you 
       > just took it in sort of a weird direction.
    

Fair enough. We all read the article that is posted at the top right? A long
discussion about Super Smash Brothers and how all of its characters were
ranked by players, and how the rank of the characters changed over a long
period of time as players figured out how to play them and interact with the
environment? The _author_ of that piece used that definition of unbalanced. I
just happened to like it, or resonate with it as I wrote, because in my
experience playing World of Warcraft for years and years. Changes that the
developers made in the character abilities, primarily it seemed to address
player vs player perceptions of "balance" (which was the term the WoW
developers used), made all of the characters nearly uniform in their effective
capabilities. So when the WoW developers said "the character
classes/races/roles are more balanced in this patch" the experience was that
the game was "less interesting" to me. There was an interesting metric for
that which was a characters "rotation" which was code for the sequence of
commands the character would use in battle, which the more "balanced" the game
became, the more uniform/boring that sequence became[1].

That said, it sounds like Guilty Gear is a lot of fun. And yes, that sort of
global diversification is something I really like in a game and it keeps it
interesting to me. And to your point having diverse capabilities that do not
map 1:1 on the characters is part of the charm. And that is part of the charm
of Super Smash Brothers which started this conversation. So after all this
wonderful discussion I think we just figured out we agree with each other :-)

[1] Jokes about Paladin's having a single 'i win' key they just pounded again
and again, or simplifying the user interface to three buttons, 'fight',
'farm', and 'cyberz'

~~~
CocaKoala
Right; I think part of the confusion is that the author talks a lot about
'balance' in Smash but never actually defines what he means by it.

I got the impression from the article that when he talks about "balance", he
means "constant and ongoing change to reduce options which players feel are
overpowered, and enhance options which players feel are underpowered". He
talks about Smash being "unbalanced", and then immediately explains that it's
a console game which has never been patched. He then follows up by contrasting
it with LoL, and the constant state of patching that LoL exists in. Treating
"balance" as a verb, rather than an adjective. That's a very different
interpretation of the concept than what I'm used to thinking, and so I think
you're right that we ended up talking past each other a bit and ended up at
the same place anyways.

Guilty Gear is a lot of fun, and if you're interested in checking it out,
you're in luck! A brand new game in the series is coming out in just a few
weeks (Guilty Gear Xrd, pronounced "Ecksard"), for ps3/ps4. A bunch of people
are really looking forward to it and it seems like it'll be a lot of fun. It's
a very different style of game from Smash, but if you like one, you may well
like the other.

------
valarauca1
If I could comment to the author directly. Look into the Tier lists for Street
Fighter, and Namely Street Fighter Turbo II. Which is also completely
unpatched, but still has an actively changing tier list despite being over 20
years old.

~~~
forrestthewoods
Author here! Can you point me to a set of tier lists for Street Fighter? I
actually looked very briefly but couldn't find anything. It's possible to find
a single tier list but what makes the Smash Bros post work so well is that
it's 12 lists from the same source over 10 years.

I've found a few good tier lists for SF2 and SF4, but nothing consistent
enough to really show their evolution over time.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Here are some tier lists for SF3 (Second Impact and Third Strike)...

[http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_2nd_Impact#Tier_...](http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_2nd_Impact#Tier_List)

[http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_3rd_Strike#Tiers](http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_3rd_Strike#Tiers)

Shoryuken doesn't seem to have a tier list for New Generation...

[http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_New_Generation](http://wiki.shoryuken.com/Street_Fighter_3:_New_Generation)

... but found these...

[http://cyberfanatix.com/forums/index.php?topic=100.0](http://cyberfanatix.com/forums/index.php?topic=100.0)

[http://www.killermovies.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-48991...](http://www.killermovies.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-489918-the-
fighting-games-tier-listing.html)

------
NanoWar
Make sure to watch this awesome documentary about SSBM:
[https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoUHkRwnRH-
KTCH3tJ9Wv...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLoUHkRwnRH-
KTCH3tJ9WvsWWPEgUu-y6d) (Beware, it's 4 hours long in total, hehe)

~~~
Mithaldu
I wanted to like this, but it's 99% fluff and very weak to watch, even
outright boring.

Maybe it's because i simply don't know the game, but right from the bat they
expect the watcher to know the best players, and how the game works. Just
throwing out names and techniques without explaining anything, while
describing the completely typical 90s/00s mobile gaming nerd scene, which is
identical to lan parties, demoscene parties, CCC clubs and what have you.

Secondly they show plenty of game footage, but it's like they made sure that
it's a meaningless jumble by doing jumpcuts in amounts, frequency and rapidity
that would make modern hollywood movies envious; and also exclusively using
footage that's visually flawed in being either: out-of-focus, thumbnail
resolution, sub-10 fps, shaky-cam, composed of fist-sized compression
artifacts, overexposed or (something common to almost ALL the clips) presented
entirely without comment or explanation.

Mind, so far i've seen 1 and a half videos of theirs and peeked into the third
to see if it gets any better, but it really looks like this documentary
doesn't say anything about the game, and is entirely a documentary about the
social and competitive scene and the people in it.

~~~
CocaKoala
Three minutes in to the first video: "This is about the seven greatest players
who, in their time, ruled the world".

So yeah, it seems like it's about the players and the community.

edit: The first video has so far gone over wave dashing and l-canceling, so it
seems like it actually goes over some mechanical details of the game as well.
I'm not really sure what you were expecting?

~~~
Mithaldu
Two things: Directly before that sentence the voice says "This is about a game
that was never designed to be played competitively." However it's really not
been about the game at all.

Secondly, i was directly addressing OP's description of this series as "this
awesome documentary about SSBM", which is (not intentionally, but
nevertheless) far from what the documentary is actually about.

> The first video has so far gone over wave dashing and l-canceling

It mentioned them. I still have no idea what wave dashing is at all, since
they never explain it beyond "you press a lot of keys really quickly, like in
starcraft". And l-canceling has a comparison, but it's shown extremely
quickly, with little explanation fo what is being shown, and the meaning of
the "l" is never explained. Heck, the only reason i know what canceling means
is that i played godhand.

> what you were expecting?

Interesting stuff about the gameplay itself, the techniques used. What's the
normal gameplay, how does competitive differ, what breakthroughs have been
made, how and why do competitive techniques work. I really wasn't expecting
"yes this guy drove like a thousand miles to play a game and win 200$" to be
drawn out over many minutes. Not to discount the achievement, but i've heard
tens of such stories before.

Edit: Also gameplay footage which has more meaning than any of the trailers to
the new transformers movies.

~~~
CocaKoala
I thought the explanation of wave dashing was pretty clear: you jump, and then
immediately cancel that jump into a downwards dodge; this makes you slide
across the floor. The video explains that in basically those words, and pretty
clearly shows that you can wave dash faster than you can run, which gives you
greater mobility.

L-canceling was pretty clearly shown to be a technique that cancels the
recovery of the move; this is shown by not only the side-by-side comparison,
but also the players who literally say "He knew about l-cancelling before us,
so he was able to do moves, like, you know, l-cancel his moves to stop the
delay on moves before us". They don't explain why it's called "l-cancelling",
but that's not going to add more information to the explanation of the
utility. It's a documentary, not a tutorial.

~~~
Mithaldu
> pretty clearly shows that you can wave dash faster than you can run, which
> gives you greater mobility.

If they did show that then they showed it without even pointing it out. I do
remember them saying something about a jump and a slide, but that part was
very fast, and even after looking at that bit again i can't see where they
show the comparison to normal running.

> this is shown by not only the side-by-side comparison

Again, only shown for an extremely short time. By the time i figure out which
one was showing the L-cancel they were done with it already.

> They don't explain why it's called "l-cancelling", but that's not going to
> add more information to the explanation of the utility.

You think that. I do not.

> It's a documentary, not a tutorial.

There can also be a middle ground. This documentary utterly aims at one
extreme though.

\---

More importantly note that these two things, and the explanation of the
percentage, are the only times they actually bother to explain anything about
the game in the first two episodes.

~~~
CocaKoala
12 minutes into the second episode when they're talking about Ken vs.
Chillindude, and Chillindude starts talking about his strategic decisions:
"The [strategy] is simply this: you throw them upwards, and then hit them with
an up-air."

If you don't like it, that's fine; your complaints about gameplay footage are
all completely valid. But if you feel like they're not giving you information
about the game, I'm not really sure how much attention you're paying to what
they're saying.

edit: especially because some thing you're explicitly saying you want (e.g.
what breakthroughs are made) are given (l-cancelling and wave dashing, for
example) and then you just totally discount them because I guess you're
looking for frame by frame analysis in a documentary.

edit 2: 22 minutes into the second episode they go over Directional Influence.
That's more systems information for you and another example of a technical
breakthrough that changed competitive play. If you don't like the videos
that's fine, but you should probably watch a video fully before you make
complaints that are provably false.

~~~
Mithaldu
> you just totally discount

Sorry if it appears like that. I didn't express myself clearly enough.

I wasn't discounting those, but instead expected more explanations of the
basics. Without understanding of the basic movements and abilities of a
character (the only nod towards that is the breathless "you can control every
movement of your entire body"), no meaningful understanding of the impact of
the special techniques is possible. (Note how i can't even tell the difference
between the speed of a wave dash and normal running because they never once
showed normal running in isolation.)

Note specificially me saying in the bit you refer to:

    
    
        >> what you were expecting?
        >
        > What's the normal gameplay,
        > how does competitive differ
    

They could've easily done that with a short 10 minute segment where they only
go over the basics, maybe even make it optional. Or heck, a link to a tutorial
they deem useful. Or at the very minimum a warning going "if you don't already
know the game, nothing we talk about will make any sense".

------
barbs
"I'd love to play League of Legends low tier only. Can you imagine a
tournament where the 40 most used champions are all off limits? It'd be so
fun!"

Dota 2 has a similar mode[1] where you can't choose from your 40 most played
heroes, although this is based on what heroes you've played previously, not
the heroes that are most played globally.

[1]
[http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Game_modes#Least_Played](http://dota2.gamepedia.com/Game_modes#Least_Played)

~~~
swagasaurus-rex
Dota does it correctly, if you cut off the top 40, tou would see a new meta
game develop around the available champions. The tier list would not have the
same ordering as the bottom remaining champions, as some of them are better
suited to combat the removed 'meta' champs, and visa-versa.

I've been wondering if a MOBA could use a balancing algorithm, and tweak a
pre-configured variable character stat if a champion becomes too popular, too
high win ratio, or too weak.

Even more interesting IMO would be a stock market, where players can spend in
game (or real) currency to manipulate the power level of their favorite
champion. Over time, people will bid against overpowered champions and their
numbers will get tweaked downwards. You might see certain champions that
people consistently choose to invest in (to buff), but it will be an honest
measure of the popularity of the champion and can be combated if enough of the
player base hates it.

~~~
the_french
Your stock market idea is interesting, however it wouldn't work well at all
and would destroy the entire pro scene. If you check
[http://dotabuff.com/heroes/played](http://dotabuff.com/heroes/played) you'll
see the list of most played heroes and their win rates. The heroes who most
likely need buffs will be at the bottom of that list. In a stock market
simulation you would have people bidding on their favorite (popular) hero or
against their most hated (popular) hero. Heroes like Invoker who have a 40%
pub win rate are actually balanced for pro players with a 50% win rate. Given
the popularity of invoker and the low win rate, we could expect a good amount
of buffs causing the pro-metagame to shift to invoker being #1 pick.

Basically, balancing is hard.

~~~
egypturnash
What if _every_ hero got nerfed a little on a regular basis, and people voted
to keep their favorites from being nerfed? Then apply some buffing to the
least-voted heroes...

------
Thursday-
I agree with the conclusion of the article, going for a fun game rather than
trying to balance it perfectly is the best way to go. When games set out from
the start to be competitive, balanced, and cater to the professional's
feedback it takes away that element of discovery and letting the game grow
organically. If something is obviously broken then A game in recent history
that did this was StarCraft 2. StarCraft 1 became a huge competitive game well
after the last balance patch came for it. This allowed the players and the
community to grow through strategy and map making. In StarCraft 2 once
something powerful (and fun) was discovered, players went the route of
complaining online so the developers would change it. For myself and many
others, this took away a lot of the fun and hurt the longevity of the game.
Strategies/races/units falling out of favor did not happen naturally, a patch
directly caused it. In StarCraft 1 you could not complain and expect a patch
to save you, and you had to come up with something to deal with it.

~~~
hsk
To be fair, in SC1, maps played a HUGE role in balance. On Blue Storm, for
example, Zergs used to have a multiple percentage point advantage over
Terrans, but the map makers fixed that by adding a little space behind the
minerals on the natural, making it a little bit easier to defend against Muta
harass and thereby curbing the advantage.

------
Igglyboo
One of the big issues that sets Smash Bros. apart from other fighting games
like Street Fighter or Tekken is the attitude of the developers. Sakurai and
team don't really consider their game a fighting game and cater to the casual
crowd with smash bros. This is in stark contrast to Capcom who tries to make
Street Fighter _the_ competitive fighting game. This is changing somewhat with
the Wii U invitational and actually issuing balance patches this time around
for smash 4 but it will be a long time before another Smash is a competitive
hit like Melee was, Sakurai has even said that melee was _too_ technical and
was a mistake.

~~~
minimaxir
It's worth noting that the casual focus in Brawl was responsible for the
"tripping" mechanic: during battle, your character would trip completely at
random. There was no way to disable it.

Ironically, casual players hated it.

~~~
lmm
Random bonuses (items) are fun. Random penalties (tripping) are not.

------
Agustus
What we are seeing here is a demonstration of real world fog of war and the
evolution of combat, bear with me on a real world application.

In the beginning of a fight / battle / war where both competitors have never
seen one another there will be tendencies to favor an approach (character)
based on visual appeal or familiarity. This is the selection of a character
familiar to the player, look at Mario, Zelda, Luigi and their degradation over
time; new users select their favorites but realize as they get better that
these are not the best.

Over time, the players / strategists come up with new strategies to handle the
predominantly selected players. As new characters are chosen, because the
losing character demonstrates a propensity for losing, new strategies are
adopted by the new loser.

The rise of certain characters within the game demonstrate users experimenting
with them and their adopted strategies working against entrenched strategies.

Things also to consider, as less new players discover the game, the residual
data becomes more experienced player-centric as they are the remaining still
playing the game.

Ness is a character that may have some secret ability that no one knows about
and may be helpful in the future.

------
kajecounterhack
For anyone who's into low-tier heroes, here's an inspirational game & watch:
[http://youtu.be/-IsVX-3ZsFU](http://youtu.be/-IsVX-3ZsFU)

Maybe G&W will never be high tier but it's so fun to watch people push the
limits of known-to-be-bad characters out of love

------
Lavery
To be nit-picky for a moment, it's profoundly irritating when footnotes in an
article are not presented as links.

------
rubyn00bie
A bit surprised to see the analysis was of Super Smash Bros Melee and not
Brawl. Not quite as much data on it (7 years vs 12)...

For what it's worth, I actually wore out 3 Wiis playing smash bros for
probably thousands of hours.

Also, great marketing effort releasing this the day before the new one
releases.

~~~
broodbucket
Brawl has much less of a storied competitive scene, and thus there's
inherently less metagame development. Fox is considered the best character in
Melee, but the margin that Meta Knight dominates Brawl by is far, far larger.
Nowadays, competitive Brawl is pretty much dead, Melee still has large
tournaments.

I think the Melee tier story is far more interesting than the Brawl one since
there's far less motivation to develop the lower tiers in Brawl. In Melee
there's still some development in lower tiers like Game & Watch and Yoshi that
could see them climb the ranks.

------
ryanpardieck
I think maybe the takeaway here is that you can't always tell the difference
between a slightly unbalanced and a perfectly balanced game right away. You
can probably spot extreme imbalances immediately, I'd guess.

But if this game had been patched monthly, Jigglypuff or Ice Climbers might
have been buffed drastically or had their mechanics changed early on, which
would have been a shame.

A proposal: when a game has been thoroughly played, tested, and thought
through, and the designers are nearly certain that a desirable state of
balance has been reached, then restrain yourself to no more than one (maybe
two) balance tune-ups in a year. Only patch imbalances so glaring that they
are on the scale of bugs or exploits. Let things play out a bit.

------
ixtli
This is a fantastic article that I'll link to the next time people complain
about "balance" as a general construct to express that their discontent at
losing in some context. There have been other well thought out observations
similar to this about other classics, including Final Fantasy Tactics:
[http://kotaku.com/5973196/why-everybody-loves-final-
fantasy-...](http://kotaku.com/5973196/why-everybody-loves-final-fantasy-
tactics)

In the case of Tactics, the game continues to be fun even after 100 hours of
play in part because player is _rewarded_ for their effort by their units
becoming out of balance in the late end game.

~~~
saraid216
While I agree with his point, I don't think he successfully demonstrates it,
let alone proves it. There's very probably an Extra Credits video that does it
better; I'd have to look, though, and I can't do that at work.

------
TulliusCicero
He's neglecting that SSBM is an offline-only game, so imbalances take MUCH
longer to manifest. When people can easily play games against serious
competitors across the globe at any time of day, new strategies spread
extremely quickly.

------
Sniffnoy
This is an argument against regular balance patches, not against trying to
balance things in the first place. I don't think it's a good idea to conflate
the two.

------
tiglionabbit
Does the game track which characters tend to win and lose the most? I wonder
if Nintendo could aggregate this and generate their own rankings.

~~~
organsnyder
I'm pretty sure that all Smash Bros versions going back to N64 keep track of a
fairly comprehensive array of stats. I doubt that the games phone home with
that info, though.

~~~
myko
The 3DS version keeps track of those statistics for online play at least.
Nintendo ostensibly uses this information to balance the game further in
patches:

[http://kotaku.com/little-mac-is-smash-bros-biggest-
loser-165...](http://kotaku.com/little-mac-is-smash-bros-biggest-
loser-1658263617)

_Being on the developer's side, Sakurai is able to view online player
statistics for the game, and one particular statistic was brought up. "For
Super Smash Bros. Brawl, the individual character win ratios lined up nicely
in a staircase format, but [for Super Smash Bros. for Nintendo 3DS] one
fighter has a significantly low ratio." Sakurai wrote. "It's Little Mac."_

