That's a really interesting first question, cause while my gut reaction is "no, I think Melee is incredibly interesting not cause of its large roster, but because of the incredible depth to its much smaller roster.", I've also have had the same problem Soso had with melee, where there isn't really one character who resonates with me. Interestingly, I had the exact opposite experience when I picked up Ultimate upon release. I resonated super well with Zelda, absolutely loved controlling that character. Never vibed so well with a Smash character's moveset before or since... but what eventually led me to quit that game was aaaaaaalllllll the matchups, most of which I thought were really quite shallow, and any matchups that MIGHT have had depth to them you couldn't really take the time to grind cause there were SO many characters to worry about. You couldn't spend all your time mastering one when there were 90 other characters you might face in bracket. So... people would mostly fall back on "that thing my character is good at", and there was a lot less freedom in how to play the character if you wanted to win, or at least it felt that way. So... do I want to play a game with a character I love but a meta I don't, or a game with a meta I love but a character I don't? I guess for now it's the latter, but it's still something I've thought about a lot.
That’s a super interesting take. For me, it’s the complete opposite. I tried playing Ultimate for such a long time, but I couldn’t find any character that I vibed with it and couldn’t invest time in any one. On the other hand, I find Melee characters way more deep and fluid with movement and tech and love each of them. I’m also invested in my main and have a character that clicks with me.
I see it the same way as chess. There are only 6 different pieces: Pawn, Bishop, Knight, Rook, Queen, and King. This allows players to form very in-depth strategies for each piece and people are constantly finding new ways to utilize/counter each piece. The same goes for Melee, which is why the skill cap seems to be unlimited.
@@brianpk7206 Yea, but you can still have more variety and complexity with more pieces still. Of course the quality of the pieces DO matter, but I think the general question of "Is a small roster of viable characters preferable over a larger one?" is generally no, assuming equal quality of characters. Like, Melee with twice as many characters of the same quality would probably be more entertaining and refreshing to see different types of match ups with different styles of players more often. And you would see unique characters and styles come in and out of the meta far more often. Not to say Melee doesnt have an engaging cast and lots of variety still, but the argument is that it probably WOULD be better with more still. At least to a point. Of course there does become a time when there is TOO many options and htat can be an issue in and of itself. When you have 100 characters who are all viable for example, it can be overwhealming and difficult to properly optimize every single match up leading to less meta development and more linear play. But I think some balance in the middle is preferable. Melee does feel like it has too few characters, even if the quality of those characters are very high. Something like twice as many characters I think would make the game a lot more appealing to a broader audience, especially as a spectator who may not always be able to easily pick up on the slight differences in play styles between one top player of a character vs another. Like, Yea, Mang0 and IBDW play fox differently, but it can be hard to notice that unless you're a pretty good player already and deeper into the understanding of the game to actually see it. A more casual spectator probably wont be able to see it as easily unless its a large difference.
About the tech-skilll/mind-games thing (17:29) I was over at Ek's place at some point ~2007, when he was literally the best player in Europe, and when I asked him for advice after he watched me play vs someone at my skill level he told me that I needed to "get better at tech skill" and the other guy needed to "get better at mind games". I even mained the same character he did, and apparently that was the best advice he had for me. I feel like the average player today understands the game better than the combined knowledge of the entire community back then. At least in terms of explicit knowledge that they can put in words.
You know, on the subject of mindgames, in like 2007 or 2008 or so I decided I wanted to get better at melee (not as a competitor, but just so I could beat my friend jeffrey, shoutouts to jeffrey.) I started reading melee guides, and there was this one I read about sheik that, 1, explained that you could store needles, which was revolutionary knowledge to me, and 2, used the term mindgames a LOT. Storing needles was in fact itself a mindgame, because "your opponent didn't know when you would release them, so you could hold them and your opponent would play weird to not get hit by them." Aside from that, as I said, it talked about mindgames constantly, and yeah, at the time, I had no idea what mindgames meant. I didn't even really understand the needles thing. Now, I actually feel like mindgames really wasn't too far off the mark. When I'm playing neutral now, when I'm playing hot, I'm literally schmoving around the stage, I'm thinking, "my regular instinct is to do this, I'm just gonna do this thing instead. I'm gonna go to the top platform and then feint coming down twice and then jump towards the side platform and waveland backwards off of it and then double jump backwards and fade forward with dair." And I'm like, shit. Mindgames. When a sheik has a stack of needles, I for sure play weird. It's real. It's a combination of understanding what your opponent expects from you and violating their trust, and giving your opponent extra things to think about so that they can't make decisions efficiently. But mindgames is more succinct.
I very specifically remember when I was a kid, I started playing Mewtwo (he was the hardest to unlock so obviously the best character in the game) and I was playing with local neighborhood friends (we had heard about l cancelling and wavedashing but maybe had a 10% hit rate on both lol) and I would do that shit with Mewtwo lmao. Charge up the ball, get the shadowclaw and just make em SWEAT. They definitely played around it, even as like very very casual children.
I was writing a comment on my thoughts on the viable characters thing at the beginning but then I realised how much I had to say and how much of it didn't really make sense and decided against posting it. That's the very short story of how I wasted 20 minutes of my life writing a RU-vid comment. I suppose it was a very good question then Edit: and most of it was just explained by Toph way better anyway LOL
Regarding the first question, having more characters that are viable can definitely be more important for building a larger playerbase. Even if there are a lot of different ways to play a character some people may not like playing them if they do not enjoy the base character. Having more variety in character choice allows for a game to appeal to more players. Also, Ultimate has more room for variety in how you can play characters than you frame it. Pacman is actually a great example of this because while he excels in defensive play he also has a lot of tools to play more aggressively. While some characters can be a lot more linear there are quite a lot of characters with room to play in different ways.
I like having less matchups to learn but having much more in depth options for each. That being said I did wish more melee characters were viable. There's only 26 characters and at the top level less than half could win a supermajor. Some characters are just so useless it wouldn't be harmful if they were a bit better. Like the worst characters were brought more up to level with the mid-tiers at least that would be good. That's not saying people can't do well with bad characters like a G&W player is the 3rd best in my country or something like that.
While maybe having all 26 characters be viable to win a major may be a bit much, moving characters out of F tier would at least make for decent casual pick up games. Like, Kirby doesn't need to be literal dog shit in order to make space for the top 10.
In a world where fox was the only viable character, melee would lose a lot of its charm. I think 10ish good characters plus low tier heroes adds a lot of fun to the game. My favourite matchup is against yoshi, I wish we had less fox falco and more diversity
I have always thought "mind-games" was as that you are like a boss in a video game creating a pattern that is difficult for their mind to wrap around, so challenging their mind, roughly speaking
I don't think there's a "winner's mentality" needed for playing low tiers; it's that you end up fighting only the relatively worse-than-you top tier players and that stunts your growth.
No I think there is a certain mentality low tier mains have. low tier mains are losers who don’t expect to get good and they accept that, so they end up just not doing what it takes to get there
without a doubt most people who pick below the samus/pika/doc/luigi/icies area of the tier list on some level more often than not are resigned to not winning as often. that thought process will 100% make you less likely to actually work to improve past problems you have in the game because a part of you doesnt believe the tool you've given yourself *can* deal with it. whether that is true or not
I think in Melee's case, each character is so intricate that having a small roster of viable picks is completely fine. There's so much depth to the game overall that you can really feel the differences in playstyles between players who main the same character. It also makes understanding Matchups a lot simpler. You're really only considering about 1/3 of the roster, which makes it easier for competitors to focus on specific skills for specific matchups. That leads to the crazy/hype shit we see in every high level melee set. Imagine trying to have specific tech and combos for every character in ultimate or hell, even the whole melee roster. lol Fuck that.
I agree that for what it is, having 10 viable characters is fine. It'd be nice if Kirby and the like weren't literal dog shit though. They don't have to be great, but they could at least be fun.
i think some people look into the amount of viable characters in melee and already assume theres very little variety when i feel theres more to consider like mus and playstyle you can get variety within a character
ult showed that having more viable characters isn't what matters, it's more important to have more viable playstyles. despite melee only having 7-9 viable characters it arguably has more of the latter
Ultimate has an insane amount of viable characters. It’s about the lack of quality matchups. Every character kinda just does ‘their thing’. Like Toph was saying, melee is unique in that you can play every character in so many different ways, as opposed to modern games (ult)
It is kind of what matters though. Imagine if melee had most of its cast as viable characters? The game would be even bigger than it is now no question
@@tsoprano4891 I'd argue against that. Ult has way less depth in each matchup than melee. A smaller viable cast lets the pro players spend more time studying and practicing the relevant matchups, while having so many viable chars in ultimate is what leads to so many upsets to low and mid tiers due to matchup inexperience.
@@tabsmag more characters = more possible situations = more outcomes = depth. Pro studies over time will become more evolving as the game grows in age and the metagame evolves as it did when melee first came out
@@tsoprano4891 Over the 20 years, there's still meta developments happening between matchups. It would literally be impossible to have that depth if there were significantly more characters and would be impossible for a professional to catch up to every single matchup because they literally wouldn't have enough time.
For the first question, I think it makes the game less interesting to watch and play from a more casual perspective, but the more you invest in melee the better it gets. I think the big struggle for ult players (aside from things like control scheme and unconventional mechanics like L cancels) is that BECAUSE they are low level, they can't take these characters and turn them into the playstyle they want. They probably do have/ can find a character that fits perfectly for them, but it would take far longer than most players are willing to spend to get to a point where the character fits what you like.
In the case of viable characters, I think it's very specific to the game itself. Melee makes its amount of viable characters work, not every game can. Most other games that do are wild af, like Marvel vs Capcom.
One thing I will say about defensive gameplay is people who can play around well executed spacie constant aerial/shine shield pressure and falco lasers is super cool and I appreciate that
As to the first 45 seconds. I am a P+ pit main and ive always struggled finding a character in melee. I think literally every character is really cool but none reside with me personally like Pit does
As a diehard Ultimate fan, the answer is yes. Fox, Falco, Marth, Peach, and a few random Sheik masochists just aren't enough. Having Icies out there as the big bad that rarely shows up, it's not enough. I've seen enough Melee Fox to last me 10 lifetimes.
Personally I stopped watching melee tournaments a while ago because of the lack of the character diversity since from my view it just seemed like it was just watching the same game over and over again with the same commentary over and over again.
Sheik is my soul character. She’s the most fun character for me to play, except in Melee. So I also fall into an identity crisis in Melee like with the Sosa anecdote in the first question. Not super motivated to play because I don’t click with anyone like that, but chipping away with falco
Ultimate Pac-Man has quite a few approach options and can play somewhat aggressively. I disagree that ultimate inherently has less fleshed out matchups or characters. I think that the fleshed out matchups and many different ways to play characters comes from the development of melee over 20 years.
Honestly I would say melee will still be the more in depth simply by how rich the system mechanics are. But yes ultimate is a young game and not as linear as melee play set it out to be and as a ton of untapped potential.
8:58 this is why slippi unranked actually is hurting the community. People stall and camp and troll their asses off on Slippi, because there's nobody there to make fun of them for being a bunch of weenies. Then people learn to play that way and take it into locals. I noticed this game became leagues more campy after slippi unranked released.
Reduce timer. I truly do not think it will cause more people to stall for timeout, just make the sets that do go that way end quicker. Just wanna see some experimentation Or we could just run rishis jungle jam
What ever happened to Rishi's Jungle Jam anyway? I haven't seen it in a hot minute. Like, it was proposed 3-ish years ago, then it was run on 2 or so tournaments and then never again, right? I really unironically liked it..
there are pros and cons to both sides.. With smaller pools of viable rosters, there's less homework to do when you find your character, making it easier to "get into the groove" of the meta, as you can dedicate more time to less MUs. However, if none of the viable characters interest you, you now have a character crisis because nothing really fits the way you want to express yourself. With bigger pools of viable rosters, you're much more likely to find something you like, but now you have a messy number of MUs to worry about and having to deal with more annoying nuances as you climb up the skill ladder. In melee, you still end up having to learn some annoying MUs and as you get better, it gets more annoying, yeah, like that one link or bowser main is gonna come at you as a spacie player and you're going to need to have the answer for that, so either way it gets annoying as hell at the end of the day. I can see an argument for both sides honestly.
I find unviable characters make the game interesting too, against all odds these players attempt to get good results with a seemingly shit character and it can work sometimes
It drives me INSANE when people say Melee has character variety, because they think 9/26 or 11/26 is a lot, when it's not even close to half-and two of those are characters that are only represented by one, single, solitary top player (Amsa, Axe) and everyone else just plays spacies, Marth, Sheik, Puff, Falcon, Peach, or the occasional ICs or the occasional Samus. There, I just named the entire Melee roster. Wow, such variety. Don't get me started on the people who argue low tiers being good would make the game more boring, or that differing playstyles is somehow a good substitute for having 6-7 frequently-seen characters in your game. Obviously, the level of personal expression Melee gives you is out of this world, but I like to see different characters. I wanna see someone do crazy shit with Link or Mewtwo, but it's like seeing a unicorn, and I think that really sucks.
Then it sounds like you should play P+, my friend ;p join us in the game with abundant character diversity but still with the sickness of Melee mechanics
this is like the people who also say this for like pokemon vgc or anything really its the ultimate casual opinion, there's stakes on the line and people play what is good Variety comes with good game design with good game design people can play what is good and just modify the good characters by playing them THEIR way you don't need to add 40 characters with one playstyle like street fighter 5, this is less interesting than melee(people who play hate SF5) melee whether intentionally or not went with the other option making 9-11 characters with 100 playstyles and people love it if the game allows for variety in playstyle on things competitively viable there is barely any gain in picking a new character to make the game more interesting I'll take a game with 1 character if that character has 300 viable moves and you can have 100+ playstyles with just the one character its impossible to have perfect balance in a game with more than one single character so there will ALWAYS be characters that suck and characters that are good top level will pick what is good
It's very limited, but I think midteirs could have more representation. There have been several high level Luigi mains there are currently at least 3 high level Pikachus, and Yoshi will take some time. Doc is on the edge of viability and we've seen some results from Franz the doc main. ICs used to be more common before wobbling was banned and hopefully ICs become more popular (did you know people use to think the were better than Falcon?). Overall there's more to Melee than what we see in the current meta though it's still a small roster. Oh and we need to fix G&W he was wronged.
pound stalling literally doesn't work, you do lose height and eventually you need to go back to ledge. If you can't punish puff going back to ledge with less jumps it's completely your fault
His first point about the same characters feeling different based upon who is using them, at the highest levels, is something I would identify about Ultimate right now. Acola's Steve doesn't look like Jake's. Cosmos's Aegis doesn't look like MKLeo's. Proto's Min Min doesn't look like Dabuz's. Aaron's Diddy doesn't look like Tweek's. Etc. It's definitely hard to see the value in theoretical keeping a viable roster small.
I absolutely hate the terms advantage/disadvantage state, like what a meaningless and unhelpful way to describe the game. It's even better because that's like high level analysis to Ultimate players. Esam be like "Pikachu is sooo good in advantage state" like what bruv
Why not just remove characters that are unviable? They provide no purpose and never will and people seem to be against the idea of balancing Melee so why not?
The original point to Smash Bros was to play as your favorite Nintendo character. Removing a bunch of them would get both casuals and hardcore players upset.
ik this comment is pretty old but why would you want to do that? then for example armada couldnt have picked young link against hungrybox. many characters once thought unviable have now won majors too
