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Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) 2014 Thread

IsaVulpes said:
Melee WAS the game you're describing - kids can mash and have fun seeing Peach beat the shit out of Fox -- balance is a non concern.

Of course. I'm not saying that Melee doesn't appeal to the average gamer, nor am I saying that it's catered to the competitive scene. Many people played it either casually, competitively, or both. The meta game that has evolved over the years is fantastic from a competitive standpoint, but the game itself is also well built in the sense that it's very open and friendly to anyone who wants to simply jump in and play for fun.

Regardless, this has little to do with my argument. My main point is that Sakurai himself does not develop Smashbros with the intent of creating a highly competitive fighting game. He's stated this several times, making it clear that he wants to develop a game that anyone and everyone can play. In other words, he wants to cater the game to be both competitive and fun. He does care about the competitive aspect of the game, but he also cares greatly for how fun and entertaining it is. For him, it's important that people can play the game both casually and competitively and enjoy it in their own way.

I'm not trying to make an argument for the mechanics or playstyles of the various games throughout the series. Rather, I'm simply trying to remind people of Sakurai's intent behind the choices he makes when developing Smashbros. I'm also not trying to defend the choices he makes (some I agree with, some I don't), but it's important to consider that what we want Smashbros to be isn't necessarily the same as what Sakurai wants it to be.
 
IsaVulpes said:
Yeah fuck that shit, "Discussion"? Where are we, a forum? I want to state random baseless possibly wrong things and forbid people of responding to them!
So I'm obligated to talk to you when I don't want to? If I believe in something it must be challenged and I have a responsibility to defend my views? That's just some bullshit man, why can't I have an opinion and still be left alone?
I'm not saying you have to believe what I say, all I care about is that I can be heard.
 
Skullmageddon said:
My main point is that Sakurai himself does not develop Smashbros with the intent of creating a highly competitive fighting game. He's stated this several times, making it clear that he wants to develop a game that anyone and everyone can play. In other words, he wants to cater the game to be both competitive and fun. He does care about the competitive aspect of the game, but he also cares greatly for how fun and entertaining it is. For him, it's important that people can play the game both casually and competitively and enjoy it in their own way.
I don't think you got my point.

Sakurai wants to make Smash a game that can be enjoyed by "Competitive and Casual gamers alike"?
That describes Melee *in perfection*. Casual players had a ton of fun with it (nobody in their right mind can deny this!) and it's hyper competitive (this is even less of a debate).

Brawl (and apparently 4) make it MUCH MUCH LESS appealing for the Competitive fanbase while at the same time not changing anything that make it more appealing to the Casual fanbase (which was happy with Melee in the first place, so it didn't exactly need any additional pandering).
Or well, maybe it DID make it more appealing to the casual playerbase, but via things which the competitive fanbase either doesn't give a crack about (storymode) or even stuff which they welcomed with open arms (better OST, better graphics).
Tripping doesn't make a game more fun for the casual playerbase. Okay, maybe it does for three year old kids who are used to playing snakes and ladders, but for the rest it's pretty much "whatever". Sometimes they'll get annoyed by it, sometimes it will lead to funny situations, overall they'll not care. At the same time however, it hyper damages the competitive scene.
Removal of L-Cancelling in Smash4 will have ZERO impact on any casual match EVER, while taking away a fun option at the highest level of play. This isn't "I want to make it more fun for casuals", this is "I want to make it less fun for competitives".

What Sakurai does (or did) isn't "Making a game that's fun for casuals and competitive players alike", it's "Making a game that's fun for casuals while trying to implement as many roadblocks as possible to completely alienate the competitive playerbase".

Denizen said:
So I'm obligated to talk to you when I don't want to? If I believe in something it must be challenged and I have a responsibility to defend my views? That's just some bullshit man, why can't I have an opinion and still be left alone?
You're not obligated to respond if you don't feel like it, but you're most definitely not in a position to forbid me from answering your posts.
Freedom of Speech means you can say what you want, but that also entails that I'm free to call your statements stupid.
If you want to have an opinion but not talk with people about it, DO NOT POST IT ON A FORUM. A post on a forum essentially means "I am putting this up for discussion", as that's what a forum is made for.
 
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IsaVulpes said:
You're not obligated to respond if you don't feel like it, but you're most definitely not in a position to forbid me from answering your posts.
Freedom of Speech means you can say what you want, but that also entails that I'm free to call your statements stupid.
You're right about that, Freedom of Speech means that I can state my opinion but it also means that I can't stop you from trying to start a discussion with me about it. As much as I hate for my views to be challenged there's really nothing I can do about it, and I'm happy for that because Freedom of Speech is a beautiful thing.
IsaVulpes said:
If you want to have an opinion but not talk with people about it, DO NOT POST IT ON A FORUM. A post on a forum essentially means "I am putting this up for discussion", as that's what a forum is made for.
Alright then that's good to know. From now on I'm not going to post any of my views ever again because trying to teach these idiots right from wrong is both impossible and a waste of my time, and if I'm expected to do that every time I make a statement then I'd rather just stay quiet.

I know what's right, and I don't intend to tell you what that is unless you're hurting people.
That's my new philosophy born from me being sick of hearing stupid people say stupid things.
 
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Jutsei said:
If he was trying to alienate competitive players, he wouldn't have removed tripping.
I know I may be completely wrong about this, but I honestly believe that Sakurai took tripping out because there was a substantial number of casual players that hated it. I'm not trying to suggest that Sakurai doesn't care about the competitive scene, as we clearly see that he does, but I question whether or not he would have removed it if only competitive players hated it.
 
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IsaVulpes said:
What Sakurai does (or did) isn't "Making a game that's fun for casuals and competitive players alike", it's "Making a game that's fun for casuals while trying to implement as many roadblocks as possible to completely alienate the competitive playerbase".

I don't really agree with the way this is stated. I actually don't believe that Sakurai and co. are designing specifically to alienate the competitive playerbase, although I will grant that the removal of many mechanics could be considered a roadblock to the emergence of high level play. I just find it difficult to attribute Nintendo's efforts to a deliberate denial of the competitive playerbase. Instead, I think it's more of a conflict of interests; Sakurai has his particular vision for Smash and in some ways this is at odds with the kind of game competitive players want to see. Having the series be a beloved property by all makes it that much more painful. I don't really see how this is that different from the traditional conservative game design that Nintendo is known for, where the director's opinions get priority, and it appears that Sakurai just felt that pre-Brawl's design was undesirable. I think that these days, the community is just used to getting more of what they want -- no opinions on whether this is a good thing or bad.

More like, Nintendo's design philosophy towards Smash is to ensure that the game is approachable. This isn't to say that Melee wasn't approachable, or that Brawl is more suited towards casuals, because it's been pointed out that everybody played Melee and that Brawl was actually absurdly glitchy. All the same Nintendo seems more intent on generating wide appeal rather than focusing on specific contentious design points, things that could possibly be considered "unfair" by anybody. To Nintendo, winning and skill gaps due to relatively obscure game knowledge are unfair -- this is the company that made the blue shell and removed snaking, after all.

Wait, this is the E3 thread. Shit.
 
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Just because it isn't geared towards a competitive crowd does not mean it can't be played at a competitive level. Anything can be played at that level if one chooses to. Plenty of people play Brawl at that level even if Sakurai wanted to make it as casual-friendly as possible. People just need to adapt to a new game instead of bitching about how it isn't like something else. If you wanna play Melee, play Melee, or Project M. Smash 4 can, and will be played on a competitive level even if it isn't like Melee.

And why're we talking about this in an E3 thread.
 
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This sums up my final thoughts on E3 this year.

tumblr_n71bffDrOn1tp1b7ro1_500.gif
 
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Wii Sports Club has online, that's pretty neat. Baseball, Bowling and something else at launch, Boxing will come later in the eShop.
 
Izzmo said:
Give me some examples of what you mean pls, i'd like to understand your point better.

I definitely agree that Brawl is more broken than Melee in many respects. There are a lot of balance issues, exploits, and details in the mechanics that offset the overall balance of the game in unexpected ways. I'm going to try to not talk about mechanics and gameplay too much because there's just way too much to talk about. Rather I'd like to try to keep things simple. Smash 64 was an experiment for Nintendo, Melee was a quick response to the success of that experiment, and Brawl was the iteration that gave Sakurai the time and resources to polish the game into what he believed the game should be.

Basic elements of Melee such as movement, blocking, recovery, ect. are simply less lenient and more cumbersome than in later games in the series. There's more ending lag to shielding, the rules governing recovery and ledge grabbing are very strict, character movement and fall speed is very high, and so on. When readdressing these aspects of the game for Brawl, Sakurai changed the details behind many of the these basic elements. Why? Because he didn't have time to polish them in the first place. He may have put in an unconventional amount of time and hours over a 13 month period to develop Melee, but no matter how you look at it that's not a lot of time. It's pretty clear that a lot of the details in Melee's mechanics aren't ideal to the playstyle that Sakurai wants in a Smash title, otherwise he wouldn't have made many of the changes that he made. The problem most people have is that Sakurai's methodology behind making the game accessible to everyone is to simply dumb down the mechanics and make the game "easier" for everyone to play. Hence why Brawl physics are floaty, recovery is very lenient, hit stun barely exists, and so on. This makes for a game with smooth movement and gameplay and very intentional mechanics, BUT it also completely kills a lot of what made a game like Melee so great and competitive. I'm not saying I agree with a lot of the design choices that Sakurai has made regarding game mechanics, because there are many things he's done that I don't agree with. Even so, there was clear intent behind the changes in mechanics that he made when developing Brawl, therefore it feels more polished regardless of whether or not the mechanics are well developed.

Brawl also had a lot of effort put into every other aspect of the game including things like UI development, extra game modes, narrative (lol), music, and many other details. I'm not saying that Melee doesn't look good or that it's not well put together, in fact I think everything about Melee is very nicely done. It's just clear that there was a lot more time and money put into pushing the overall content development for Brawl, therefore the overall feel and quality of the game feels more unified and intentionally designed.

And yes, I love both Melee and Brawl :D. They're both very fun and enjoyable in their own ways. I just think that Brawl, while it has a plethora of game breaking issues, feels way more polished than Melee because it has clear intent behind it's design, while Melee just happened to be built in a manner the reflects the desires of the competitive community. Unfortunately for the competitive scene, Sakurai's design philosophies vary greatly from what many would hope for.

IsaVulpes said:
I don't think you got my point.

Nah man, I totally understand your point. Especially considering I agree with everything you've said. What I'm trying to say is that Sakurai has a very distinct design philosophy behind how he makes decisions when developing Smash. He wants the game to appeal to everyone (which means casual and competitive players alike), but when it comes down to his decision making it's very clear that he doesn't know how to balance the game so that it's both deeply competitive and simple to approach.

In other words, Sakurai has a very clear image of what he wants the game to be. He belives that, through the decisions he's made thus far, he's developing a game that can be enjoyed both competitively and casually. He has very strong intent behind his decisions and a deeply willed design philosophy, which is apparent in the choices he makes. He's not trying to make the game look unappealing to the competitive scene, rather he strongly believes that he's making the correct choices for the competitive scene based on how he thinks the game should feel and play. He simply doesn't know any better because not only is he not a deeply competitive Smash player, but he also doesn't view the game as something that is built to be strictly competitive. His design choices, while strong and distinct, conflict with those who want the game to remain strongly competitive.

To put things simply, he makes some wrong choices. He's trying to make a game that everyone can enjoy, but is alienating people in the competitive Smash scene by making choices that conflict with what people want.

Even so, I still think most people are getting a little bit ahead of themselves. The game looks pretty awesome so far, regardless of how it actually plays. It's way too early to make any strong comments on the competitive viability of the game because it takes time to really analyze and understand a game like this. If given some time the competitive community may end up finding that there is a lot of depth to the mechanics and overall playstyle of Smash 4 that make it enjoyable from a competitive standpoint. That, or everyone will be sorely disappointed. Who knows. Either way, I think the game looks like it'll be fun :P

At any rate I don't want to derail the E3 thread with a Smash debate, so hopefully we can all either come to some sort of agreement or simply agree to disagree :)
 
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Can we finally put Other M behind us and get back to making good Metroid games?
 
Denizen said:
See this is what I try to avoid, but nooooo every time I open my mouth someone has to try and debate with me. Can't I make my statement without having to prove it?
tumblr and twitter
 
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Skullmageddon said:
Of course. I'm not saying that Melee doesn't appeal to the average gamer, nor am I saying that it's catered to the competitive scene. Many people played it either casually, competitively, or both. The meta game that has evolved over the years is fantastic from a competitive standpoint, but the game itself is also well built in the sense that it's very open and friendly to anyone who wants to simply jump in and play for fun.

Regardless, this has little to do with my argument. My main point is that Sakurai himself does not develop Smashbros with the intent of creating a highly competitive fighting game. He's stated this several times, making it clear that he wants to develop a game that anyone and everyone can play. In other words, he wants to cater the game to be both competitive and fun. He does care about the competitive aspect of the game, but he also cares greatly for how fun and entertaining it is. For him, it's important that people can play the game both casually and competitively and enjoy it in their own way.

I'm not trying to make an argument for the mechanics or playstyles of the various games throughout the series. Rather, I'm simply trying to remind people of Sakurai's intent behind the choices he makes when developing Smashbros. I'm also not trying to defend the choices he makes (some I agree with, some I don't), but it's important to consider that what we want Smashbros to be isn't necessarily the same as what Sakurai wants it to be.
He did indeed intentionally design Brawl with things to hurt competitive play. At that point in time, he was a selfish person, hurt for whatever reason by Melee design and mechanics leading to a competitive scene instead of proud. Maybe he's different now. I am not in the least bit interested in competitive Melee or Brawl but those things he did in Brawl to spite Melee made Brawl hard to enjoy as much, even with Brawl's cast of characters being amazing.

I don't care what Nintendo, Namco or Sakurai says or does, I am not holding my breath for Smash 4 to be fun to hit people in casually. Why should they care if no matter what they do, they will sell absurd amounts just on name alone.

Jutsei said:
If he was trying to alienate competitive players, he wouldn't have removed tripping.
Nobody liked tripping. He's interested in doing things casuals won't notice either way that spite people that play competitively.
 
BeatNinja said:
Just because it isn't geared towards a competitive crowd does not mean it can't be played at a competitive level. Anything can be played at that level if one chooses to. Plenty of people play Brawl at that level even if Sakurai wanted to make it as casual-friendly as possible. People just need to adapt to a new game instead of bitching about how it isn't like something else. If you wanna play Melee, play Melee, or Project M. Smash 4 can, and will be played on a competitive level even if it isn't like Melee.

And why're we talking about this in an E3 thread.
It was at E3 and there was gameplay and impressions.
 
NOW I AM HYPE.

Nintendo, don't drop the ball on Metroid again, or I will collapse in a heap. Please don't play with me like this.
 
Balder said:
Cuphead is still the best thing in this E3 though. :3
I finally got around to looking at the new cuphead trailer and all i can say is:
Is there going to be a Peacock cameo? because it REALLY looks like there should be a Peacock cameo.
 
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^Peacock as secret boss of Cuphead.

Anyway, here's a leaked unreleased trailer for the, at the time unnamed, Bloodborne.
Why they opted to NOT show something this amazing is beyond me. Hopefully they didn't chop off any'a this because it looks great.
The whole deranged mob angle reminds me of Resident Evil 4. I hope they build on that. The aspect of being actively pursued seems like a natural fit in a Souls-formula title.
 
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:U::U::U: NOW IT LOOKS LIKE A GOOD GAME.
Speaking of horror games, The Evil Within looks even better than ever.
...and I decided that I should probably apologize for my behavior yesterday. I still stand by my views on monogender games but my bad attitude was uncalled for and my usually clear judgement was clouded by uncontrolled emotion and other things which I will not go into further detail about. (I won't way that it wasn't alcohol) So yeah, sorry for being such a stupid jackass.
IsaVulpes you have my respect. I hope I haven't lost too much respect from the community.
 
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Go ahead, shoot me for liking to shoot things.

You better laugh, that was a good joke. Seriously though I don't mind all the shooters that Sony puts out, the genre isn't inherently bad it's just used a little too often.
 
Denizen said:
Go ahead, shoot me for liking to shoot things. You better laugh, that was a good joke. Seriously though I don't mind all the shooters that Sony puts out, the genre isn't inherently bad it's just used a little too often.
MGO2 was the last shooter I enjoyed (mainly because I could stun, CQC people, use MGS weapons and items like boxes and magazines and lots of fun modes and maps).

Every shooter after those 2000+ hours of MGO2 has just been so samey feeling.
 
Shooters are okay (and in some cases, freaking awesome), but the sheer number of them out there can easily make the genre feel over-saturated.

I'm not even sure if I would like to see a genre I really like fill 50% of an E3 Conference.

Unless it was Fighting Games.
 
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Mr. X said:
A post on GAF made graphs about E3

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=837389

Most important graph

CvppPQh.png
I didnt look up whether that graph is accurate, but if it is, then it's amazing how Nintendo Managed to look so good with so little. Quality over Quantity. And That's not bashing the other two. They did great as well and for the first time on over a decade I'm interested in xbox
 
I guess it just depends on how fresh your gaming experience stays after 2000+ hours on varying genres:

Action/Adventure: Okay maybe I haven't found everything, let's try that again
Sports: I've thrown ball in hoop more times than I would like to admit
WRPG/JRPG: Did I get all 67 alt endings/unlock all the costumes and weapons/ beat all the optional bosses yet
Shooting: See Sports and replace "thrown ball in hoop" with "shot at man/alien/man-alien hybrid"
Fighting: I'm almost certainly not sure definitely completely sure I can go to EVO/some other tournament/online and not embarrass myself
Rhythm Game: Please don't stop the music, baby
 
But what about the SIMULATION GAME?
 
Does Animal Crossing count?
 
Animal Crossing is love. Animal Crossing is life.
 
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Mr. X said:
He did indeed intentionally design Brawl with things to hurt competitive play. At that point in time, he was a selfish person, hurt for whatever reason by Melee design and mechanics leading to a competitive scene instead of proud. Maybe he's different now. I am not in the least bit interested in competitive Melee or Brawl but those things he did in Brawl to spite Melee made Brawl hard to enjoy as much, even with Brawl's cast of characters being amazing.

I don't care what Nintendo, Namco or Sakurai says or does, I am not holding my breath for Smash 4 to be fun to hit people in casually. Why should they care if no matter what they do, they will sell absurd amounts just on name alone.


Nobody liked tripping. He's interested in doing things casuals won't notice either way that spite people that play competitively.

He may have acted like an ass when he added tripping to start with but I think people are still too butt-hurt over it. The problem with competitive Smash Brothers in general is that the community acts like the games were ALWAYS made to be played that way and were designed with that aspect in mind from the beginning and that's just not true. I would have no problem if they did re-add those mechanics that made Melee competitive playing what it was but honestly I just don't think it's that big of an issue. Not to mention, taking it personally when they removed those things was just silly. Sakurai saw them as what they were, glitches and bugs being exploited for things they were never intended to be and in fact those things were never intended to exist in the first place. Perhaps he equated those things to his own failures or something like that, who knows. But the point remains that Smash was never designed to be played as a 1v1 tournament fighter style game like it developed into with the Melee competitive scene and it still to this day is not designed with that in mind.

If you don't like it, there's still Melee and Project M.

Not to say that I don't think it would be nice if they did cater more toward the competitive scene but I can understand where their design philosophy is coming from for the game and they don't want to focus on those competitive mechanics. I think people should try to develop new meta for the new Smash Brothers games rather than crying and bitching about it being different. How many changes happened that required adjusting and learning between different incarnations of Street Fighter or KoF? I mean, I'm no expert on competitive Smash at all, but honestly I think that at least trying to adapt to new games is a better idea than just calling it terrible and never really giving it a chance just because it has different mechanics from the 2nd or 3rd games in the series.
 
Mysterygamer3k said:
He may have acted like an ass when he added tripping to start with but I think people are still too butt-hurt over it. The problem with competitive Smash Brothers in general is that the community acts like the games were ALWAYS made to be played that way and were designed with that aspect in mind from the beginning and that's just not true. I would have no problem if they did re-add those mechanics that made Melee competitive playing what it was but honestly I just don't think it's that big of an issue. Not to mention, taking it personally when they removed those things was just silly. Sakurai saw them as what they were, glitches and bugs being exploited for things they were never intended to be and in fact those things were never intended to exist in the first place. Perhaps he equated those things to his own failures or something like that, who knows. But the point remains that Smash was never designed to be played as a 1v1 tournament fighter style game like it developed into with the Melee competitive scene and it still to this day is not designed with that in mind.

If you don't like it, there's still Melee and Project M.

Not to say that I don't think it would be nice if they did cater more toward the competitive scene but I can understand where their design philosophy is coming from for the game and they don't want to focus on those competitive mechanics. I think people should try to develop new meta for the new Smash Brothers games rather than crying and bitching about it being different. How many changes happened that required adjusting and learning between different incarnations of Street Fighter or KoF? I mean, I'm no expert on competitive Smash at all, but honestly I think that at least trying to adapt to new games is a better idea than just calling it terrible and never really giving it a chance just because it has different mechanics from the 2nd or 3rd games in the series.


Smash was always about beating the other players. The option is there to be played 1v1, the option is there to pick stages, the option is there to turn off items or change their frequency. It was designed to be played how the player found it fun. A group of people who enjoyed it being played a certain way would travel and play it that way in events.

Your last paragraph is weird. People do try it and adapt to it. Some people stick to it, others go back to the old version. This complaining isn't unique to Smash or fighting games. "It's different, it sucks" is an annoying strawman. Who would not try to play and enjoy the game with the most active playerbase and instead go for the smaller older one and hope others feel the same. SF4 still has people playing just because others are and not because they actually enjoy it (like Nuki).

I am casual with any Smash games. I like N64 and Melee, I didn't like the way Brawl felt and played by comparison. If you ask what I didn't like, I'd say movement felt slow, pushing buttons and the stages did too much.
 
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Guys, I think we should take this Smash discussion to the actual Smash thread.
 
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