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Once longer clips come out, you can just put whole games into clips now

Moky was speaking absolute facts here. Jmooks run at Genesis 8 was straight up one of the best ever hypest runs in melee to watch ever. And at the time most were saying it as a fluke. Then Jmook proceeded to literally not miss a single top 8 and beat zain multiple times for all of 2022. Then 2023 he won a super major and then won collision after making a losers run which cody and zain both hadn't done yet he was the first new player to prove they could win from losers. Then he went into his big slump that he's still in now. And with aklo he just has always been good as well since he started attending majors after covid and he had a little slump first half of 2024 but now the last few tourneys he really looks like he's competing with moky for that second best fox spot where he can beat everyone except Zain Mango and Cody is also tough. Even the cody and zain storyline is interesting with amsa and mango disrupting things to where they have only played twice this year like idk all it is to this day is the players and commentators need to realize that there are more interesting storylines than ever and they gotta convey that. Bro before Moky and Cody broke out it was literally just like Leffen was the only good fox main than significant gap and then SFAT. Dfox crush and ice all had good runs here and there but they all stopped playing by 2018.

pingas

with almost 0 gameplay youtube still thinks this video is m*ltiversus

kurtis "johns" pratt 😂😂

Melee still has a barrier to entry, it’s just a physical one instead of a learning one. Either way you can’t really tell if you like the game till you invest quite a bit of time in it because until you do, you quite literally aren’t playing the same game. Some people are learners, some are doers. If you’re a doer, you’ll probably like how melee does things better. Neither is necessarily better, just different and up to preference.

time to learn the DK MU I suppose. If Cody sucked it up and fixed the hole in his MU spread, then its time for you to do it moky

my goat

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAH

rip Moky's controller glad he got a new one tho hope to see him pop off next tournament he did well that magi set was so winnable he was up game 3 1-1 that game was just crucial for motivation to win

‘I don’t wanna John but here’s my johns” is the classic 😂

I actually played ur roommate mono at ssc and we also got kinda wrecked in friendlie dubs lol

is it just me or every time i go for a spike with falco Randall saves my opponent and if im doing a suicide dair i fucking die and they live i need too memorize the randall times.

Ailurus music

Another issue with other games is that a lot of devs are worried about balance over gameplay. I'm really not a fan of Ultimate because there's too much problem solving in characters now. Fox has a good recovery because it was bad before. Pikachu has a spike now because he didnt have a spike. Every character has broken OoS options because no one wants to be stuck in shield. Fighting for ledge isn't fun so we just buffed waiting at ledge instead. No one wants to position or be precise with their moves so hitboxes and endlag are nonexistant on most characters because well its more fun when the game is aggro, right? I dont like how a lot of fighting games just wanna make every character feel viable. And instead of being viable they just retool the game so that its easier and easier to play. A bad character in Ultimate is still gonna be a bad character, even moreso if the stuff you buff benefits everyone else. This is why I respect Street Fighter 6. It has bad characters, but they're bad because they aren't strong, not just because "oh every character has the same strenghts and weaknesses because its more balanced that way."

another factor its also people have invested so much time in this game, what they dont wanna loose their progress and switch game. Its like every other long term game.

Rivals 2 is lookin goated

why is melee speciically filled with all these hillbillies types

Most modern games are designed to have you jump in and feel like a god. Melee is more like learning to skateboard. You suck ass at first but watch others at the skate park do sick shit and get motivated. Most games don’t allow this kind of learning curve and most players won’t have the patience for it. It’s like gunz the duel or starcraft 2. Every other “fast” platform fighter I’ve played skips the learning phase.

2:50 other games put you in an F1 car, but in melee you’re Fred Flinstone and you gotta put in the work to move that fucker 🦶💨🚘

This outlines a lot of problems i had with Rivals 1. You look at Zeebee and (no shade hes really good) you kinda just see him doing what a typical kragg would do on ranked just with more consistency and success. Its not like watching a high level falco vs a mid to low level falco in melee, where the difference in not only their speed, but move choice and neutral interactions are immediately discernable. Not only that, but other platformers lack the defensive responsibility that melee has. No good CC, No slide offs, no vectoring, nothing but DI and nerfed SDI. getting hit in rivals sucks, its almost always death with little to no counterplay. Hoping Rivals 2 allowas for more defensive responsibility while being more pubishing of those who dont put the time into thoss skills

Doubles is my favorite way to play

If you think doubles isnt as fun as singles youre objectively wrong.

Ngl the points on like Monado arts or zetterburn’s burn state are incredibly dumb. If you don’t play the game for more than a day I don’t expect you to know what everything does but most mechanics in these games are not complicated at all to understand. You just have to play the game for like a week and then you probably know every single mechanic in the game. I have an issue with ults roster size making this difficult at a high level but like every other platform fighter is extremely manageable.

the main thing for me is that every new platform fighter that comes out is directly competing with melee, and none of them have been able to hold a candle to melee, so I find no point in getting into them

He’s absolutely right about the first point. First and foremost why fighting games in general are fun for people and why they stick with them is the feeling of improvement. But I think that is at odds with his other point of keeping the games simple. I get what he means, less character gimmicks more mechanical game depth, but if the gimmicks add depth to a character then learning about those gimmicks is part of that feeling of improvement, it’s just not the most fun part of improvement. It’s always going to be more fun to practice mechanical skills, then exercise rote memorization for character knowledge, but the payoff is the same. Even Melee has this. Learning to beat Falco’s lame ass laser spam is a great example. This concept is a consistent road block for beginners until they actually put in the time to learn the spacing and timing to punish it and it might be boring to practice it, it feels good to finally kill a stupid bird for lasering. Anyway what I mean is fuck Falco

I think you lost the plot a little bit around 6:00. You start talking about like how the complexity hurts the ability to just “sit around smoke weed and play video games”. I was just a little confused because this seemed like a discussion about the more competitive side of gaming. I think there’s a huge difference between casual melee players and yourself moky. I also think the vast majority of melee players today are casuals and many of them think they are competitive. I’m just saying your argument just got muddy and i still agree that more mechanics doesn’t always equal more fun. In league of legends a lot of the joy is slowly but surely chipping away and building knowledge so each game you get a little bit better. Specifically, these are mechanics that are developed and changed month by month so it has a very different content cycle. The joy of melee is trying to push the speed limit of the game as far as you can, almost the opposite of league. In melee the development is completely removed while in league the development is a living breathing part of the game.

I feel like wanting every character to be simple makes a game less appealing to a majority of people. It's nice to have those simple characters of course, but some people like those more complicated mechanic characters. Obviously, it's a person to person thing and it's fine if you don't like those weird complicated chars though.

The attractive thing about melee is that it’s so layered, but that’s also a huge deterrent for some people who just want to spam f-smash and do stupid shit. I think games like MVS are more so aiming at the ladder group, which is why they end up so heavily criticized by Melee players. I think Rivals 2 has a chance to be a really good intersection between the two camps and that makes me really excited

2v2s are unexplored in many comp games especially fighters, If counter strike can be 5v5 surely thats manageable.

Used to be someone who wished tech skill was easier. After grinding more tech and hitting my first 0 to deaths from l-cancels i finally get it

2v2s are sick asf ik he a hater but it’s my preferred mode over 1s tbh. I just have more fun with it

I don’t know why some people think Melee players need to play other platform fighters, I think it’d be nice and cool but it will never happen. Melee players play Melee because it is Melee, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I think trying to truly chase after that hyper specific audience is a fool’s errand, because they will go back to playing Melee as their main game anyhow. Especially since certain unique aspects of Melee that players like (no input buffer as an example) would be very risky to implement. While I do agree with some of his points, especially with how they handle speed (pls stop adding wavedash macros, it’ll be fine with input buffering!!) I think platform fighters are better off chasing after different audiences rather than Melee/FGC people if they want to grow.

4:51 hard agree about multiversus. I wanna learn it and know it. I like rivals, slap city, and nicktoons but they havent stuck the same way as smash

I would play more melee if i didnt have to L cancel. What a chore

Biggest difference is long hit stun. In melee someone gets a hit and if they're good theh can combo to death. Other games are just 1 or 2 hits and reset because they will reversal you

Rivals of Aether is my personal favorite of the platform fighters, with Melee/Project + being an extremely close second. I feel like Rivals does everything that Melee does right, but makes basic movement (not even taking into account movement tech, just MOVING) feels far smoother compared to Melee. I went back to play Melee, and oh my Lord, the lack of input buffer makes that game MISERABLE to pick up and play without continuous practice just to understand how to walk around and attack. It's like trying to ride a motorcycle without knowing how to ride a bike. I feel like Rivals does enough by making basic character attacking and movement less "sticky". I don't ever think I'm fighting the controls. All of this rings true for Project M/+ as well. I do sort of miss the ledge and shielding in Rivals, but the crisp, fluid, responsive movement more than makes up for it (personally).

The best games are simple - tennis, football, basketball. What makes them cool is that you can slice the ball, do a rainbow flick, or do a crossover ankle break.

I feel like melee is the Jazz of platform fighters. There’s no limit to the ways you can express yourself through your play in the game unlike others

I like most of ur points and agree with them, however I didnt like and don't agree with your opinion that you "want everyone to play the same characters". Character diversity breathes life into a game, yes if melee didn't have fox or Falco, it'd have prolly died a long time ago, BUT if every single game was fox dittos/fox and falco were the only two characters, it would have died even quicker than that. The fact that In the same game as fox dittos, you can have peach vs puff, ice climbers vs Yoshi, is incredible. Sure some characters can be "wack" like finn in multiverse, but that's the learning curve. If no weird character like ice climbers ever existed, then suddenly they did in a new game, youd say the same stuff.

he's just right. idk. I like trackmania for the same reason. the ceiling is so high that when you watch the top top top level players you realize even your imagination isn't quite on their level because you're too slow to even try for their strats and its the same for melee imo (though I haven't played in years, i just watch now) its like the goal of the game is to make you improve in different directions, melee asks you to get faster as well as more accurate and a lot of these other ones only ask you to get more accurate? (again, similarly to moky, talking in generalities, not 100% of all comparisons)

Almost every game that tries to pander to casuals while trying to make it competitive, it almost always falls short for the competitive scene

Agree, Good game is low barrier to entry and high bar for mastery

"I want this to be fast and we should all play the same character"

Melee honestly just did it so right from the defense, the offense, the pace, the counter play, the simplicity, the variety of characters which more goes towards movement and aerial speed and ground speed which dictates how you interact differently to all different characters rather than a whole different sets of move and the same aerial speed which is what all other fighters feel like to me, p+ actually also did it very good even though it doesn’t feel as smooth as melee to me so it’s definitely one of the best

super mario!

what about rivals 2?

Looks like Moky is fasting a fast while going fast

(Almost) No input buffering, simple but deep mechanics, and difficult recoveries (such as punishing jumping too early out of hitstun) are things that no other plat fighter has and keep me hooked on melee

Melee's biggest strength by and far to me is its emergent gameplay. Character's aren't complex because they have tons of implemented mechanics, they're complex because their kit is designed in a way that allows for players to innovate in all dimensions. Take fox shine for example: you have a relatively simple move. It comes out quickly, hits you in a specific direction with a set force, and it can be jump cancelled (it can also deflect projectiles but that's less important). Simply the act of it being jump cancellable already introduces out of shield options, shine turnaround upB, shine into a SH aerial, shine upsmash, etc etc. Add wavedashing, a universal piece of emergent gameplay caused by a very freeform physics engine, and you get waveshines and all of the potential that comes with that. With Falco this all allows for pillar combos, shine bair, shine SH laser, etc. Melee in general is like this; adding DI makes the combo game infinitely more complex than it would've been otherwise. It feels like platform fighters nowadays, in an effort to emulate that natural complexity, are adding things that feel very forced and unintuitive in order to make their game seem deeper. I think the worst part is is that it's unavoidable, modern Melee is a product of its players not its devs, and you can't rely on a game to have 20 years of history to become as complex as Melee. You're either forced to have a simpler game or forced complexity, it's quite a dilemma.