Reacting to: "Is Melee a Good Game?" by AsumSaus
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 มิ.ย. 2020
- Want to watch the video with no interruptions?:
• Is Melee a Good Game?
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Hey everyone, quick question.
If I in the future react to other long videos do you think we still should upload it as one video or make 2 parts?
Normally the videos I watch are between 7-15min but this one was 35min or so.
Just wanna make sure what people in general prefer when I watch longer videos
Yes we watch videos because of your interesting perspective.You could make a documentary on knitting sound interesting with superb punishes.
@@jugohayashi2389
No plan on reducing insight at all =)
Happy you enjoy these videos!
I’d say upload as one video because it’s nice to sit down for a while and watch something with a snack
I'll watch the whole thing as well, and if I needed to take a break I could just pause the video and watch it later.
It's a little tiring, especially for some people that don't have a lot of time. But it's interesting to hear your opinions anyway.
Take a shot every time Armada pauses to say something that AsumSaus says just minutes later in the video
I was drunk after just a few minutes LOL
seems to be a problem with most things he reacts to.
its a pretty generic script tbf
@@ch4nc244 well yea he's a melee fanboy
He's spent years defending the game against people who just don't want to understand it, I think it's just become reflex for him lol.
"tech-skill like Lebron James"
lebron hit that waveland
Vinscherooni 🤣☠️👍
“If i could go out and replicate what lebron james does” 😂😂😂no way !!!! Imagine armada chasedown blocking leffen/hbox or catching an ally oop with his head over the rim 💀. I cant imagine armada going off like that. And ofc when armada throws the chalk up during pregame.😂😂👌🏾
Leffen is working on it
@@kylefromtowerc9467 leffens gonna complain that the ball was .5mm off when he plays one on one with chudat and demands a rematch
"No, you don't have to be frame perfect everytime" *M2K wants to know your location*
Not every time, just 99 out of 100 times.
M2K WANTS TO DESTROY UR LOCATION
M2k knows his location and still havent done anything
"No, you don't have to be frame perfect" Continues to explain how you need to be basically frame-perfect in your attacks by needing to delay them sometimes. (He later realizes it)
@@johndinner4418 this drove me absolutely crazy. also the argument that people want buffer basically because they can't do things is misguided. he's basically attacking a stawman. pro-buffer people just want decisionmaking to matter more than your ability to push buttons on exactly the right frames.
This is just armada trying nicely as possible to tell us all to git good for an hour and half
lol
It's him pausing and saying the same thing AsumSaus is just about to say 9 out of 10 times.
I wish I could buffer in real life when playing Liszt on the piano
Same bro, lol.
Yeah, it's kind of... like... we deal with real life the way it is because there's no choice, not because it's perfect. If video games can on the other hand be improved, I don't think there's much sense in saying that they shouldn't be.
Pfff you play Liszt. Go play Chopin, a good composer
Idk I kinda feel like I buffer when I play piano
Bruh, just practice 40 hours a day and you'll be fine.
Armada you have to wait for a point to finish before you pause the video.
You stop it halfway through and start going on a multiple minute tirade about an argument the original video wasn’t even making. Then the viewer, who has seen the original, has to sit and wait for you to finish before you unpause and get more context, piece by piece.
I don’t even necessarily agree with most of the points in the original, but you and the video maker were having completely different conversations, so I don’t exactly agree with you either. Extremely, _extremely_ frustrating watch.
The original video was essentially about “can we call melee a good game as a whole” and Armada just ignorantly turned every single point into a “casual vs pro” debate.
Yeah there were a handful of strawmans or missing-the-point fallacies in Armada's responses
agreed
Agreed
Agreed
Sure armada may have some bias straw man arguments and misses the point but this is a reaction video. If u want to watch the video without him pausing just go to that video, not a reaction of that video
"good" and "favorite" are like completely different things lol
I really liked this vid, but there were a few times where you needed to let him finish a thought before you commented on it. I genuinely want to hear your analysis of his points, but sometimes interjections can come across as kneejerk reactions without proper context.
That's literally all of his analyisis vids its becoming annoying at this point.like let the man in the vid finish his point and THAN say your thoughts instead of pausing every so often before he does so an coming across as rude.
@@SwanPrincess899 yeah but he can't know when the maker of the video's argument ends so he just comments rightaway. I mean I agree with you but there isn't really something Armada could do. He could watch the video before the stream on his own and make notes and then watch it again on stream and comment according to his notes but then again idk if everyone would enjoy that kind of commentary.
[.__.]
You definitely can, and he definitely could’ve. When a new point starts, like when he gets off buffer and starts talking about controllers, you back up and tackle the entirety of the argument that you just watched.
If this was just supposed to be a reaction video, fine, but Armada seems to want to genuinely be making arguments against it, and we can’t just be satisfied with half-baked tirades against straw men crafted from a half understood minute of a multiple minute point.
You can do better. Many people have. It’s extremely easy to see how this could be improved.
Thx for pointing this out, I hate it when Armada does this...
I concur with this statement. It’d make this video better to watch if he wasn’t stopping every second to comment on something he didn’t like the other channel saying. Melee feeling like “complete ass” is a viewpoint that people have, and he was just sharing that to bring in both perspectives.
36:50 I see this argument everywhere, heres the thing. straying away from how a game was meant to be played MEANT you will be encountering more issues that the developers never intended, and cant accountable for. if you eat pizza by putting it into a blender with fruits and serving it with ice cream, is it the chef's fault if it tastes like shit?
I'm trying to see some feedback for this point, if anyone has any
17:14 First stepping into Melee and it "feeling like complete ass" is not just the fact people can't play like top players instantly. It's the fact that even very basic actions are vastly more difficult to do compared to most games out there and that includes games contemporary to Melee and ones that predate it. Melee is difficult to play at even a basic level in a way that most games are not.
I don't think Armada is even capable of understanding how bad Melee feels as someone who is going to back to melee from basically any other video game. It's frustrating to go from Ultimate where most moves can be done with ease to Melee where you need to practice timing and sometimes use tech to do basic things that are non problems in Ultimate.
@@you-mustenter-a-name1467 Yeah I mean it's understandable that he wouldn't if he's been playing regularly enough since its release. The only time he would have been able to grasp the way the game feels to a new or returning player is back when he was a fairly young kid.
I kinda see your point for the sick shit but I remember beating every event match and stuff like adventure mode at 8 years old. If I can do that as a casual back then I dont necessarily think the game is clunky by itself. It's more likely we just have a lot of different muscle memory built up from smash 4 and ultimate and it definitely does feel wierd when you go back from those.
It was hard even coming back to the stage
@@Isaiah1234567890 I did that stuff too when I was fairly young. It just takes getting used to. My basic point is that Melee has a level of awkwardness at low level that takes actual patience and practice to get over. Back when I was younger and Melee was new I didn't really think critically about how well stuff controls. I was just happy to play a much anticipated sequel to one of my favourite games and I imagine my initial excitement at all the new stuff held me long enough to get used to how awkward the game can feel at first.
Adam “I feel like” Lindgren
Ha
58:05
Ultimate's Tech skills:
-dash canceled up smash.
-dash walk.
-reverse aerial rushing.
-instant reverse aerial rushing.
-b reverse.
-wave bounce.
-dash walk.
-sling shot.
-long shot.
-hold shot.
-super extended dash dance.
-extanded dash dance.
-dash dance.
-perfect dash dance.
Character specific tech skills:
-kara cancel.(Ryu/ken)
-Monado lag cancelling. (Shulk)
-monado fusion.(Shulk)
-Aegis dash. (pyra and mythra)
-instant switch.(Pokémon trainer)
-Korean Dash. (Kazuya)
-triangle jump(peach/daisy)
-FC(Peach/daisy)
-FCFF(Peach/daisy)
-FCAFF(Peach/daisy)
-RARFC(peach/daisy)
-true imputs(Bayonetta/ken/Ryu/terry/kazuya)
-special cancelling (Bayonetta/Ryu/ken/terry/kazuya)(most strongest presence with Ken and Ryu, and least strongest presence with Bayonetta, because she is a beat them all character as opposed of a fighting game character, but she does cancel her up b into anything.)
-turnip train(peach and daisy)
-gyro train(R.O.B.)
-Bomb train(Link)
-charge cancelling(Mario/Lucario/Sheik/Samus/Dark Samus/Robin/Mii Brawler/Mii Gunner/Mewtwo)(charging animations that can be cancelled with jump or sheild.)
-Armagedon cancel(Sephiroth)
-Limit cancel(Cloud)
-Limit dash(Cloud)
-Absorber jump(mii gunner)
-Pk magnet train(Ness)
Props to you for writing all of this and all, but this is what I think.
While I do agree Ultimate has some alright tech, like B reversing introduced in Brawl, most tech isn't very helpful making them pointless. Very few of these do I see Mkleo doing in tournament matches.
In terms of character specific tech, in my opinion, some of these are hardly tech and or just combos. Like, Rob's gyro train to me isn't really a technique, more or less just a combo. Like, I wouldn't consider Mario's up throw into forward smash a technique. Also, I'd like to say that for the amount of characters there are, there isn't nearly enough char. Specific tech. Like, Samus alone in Melee has Grab extender, Homing grab, missile cancels, super wave dash, super duper wave dash, certain NIL's, and more. How many are there for, I don't know, Joker in ultimate? I think they focused more on the hype of introducing the character then making a good character, which is a reoccurring theme, but I guess it pays off I guess considering the sales.
This is great, but quality and quantity are the key factors here
And that's not even the half of em. There's so much general and character specific tech to discover that it'll take one ages to learn it all.
bro really wrote Slingshot, Longshot, and Holdshot as 3 different techs just to make the list longer. also rar vs instant rar and dash dance vs perfect dash dance lol. if you're that desperate to make the list longer, you're effectively admitting to the NEED to make it longer to try to prove a point.
don't even get me started on trying to call charge canceling a tech - dude that's just pressing L/Y to change your action - that's like saying pressing B multiple times rapidly as Fox in Melee is a character specific tech called "multiple lasers" instead of the single laser you get from a single B press.
the thing is, which James already wrote well - most of this is just arbitrary, and falls flat in the face of very simple and basic Melee tech. if you had wavedashing alone, there would be no need for any of the "shots" (which are really just 1 tech attempting to emulate wavedash, which ended up proving nearly obsolete in the end after all).
furthermore, character specific tech is near nonexistent. I think you don't know what "character-specific" means if you list "charge canceling" and then have 9+ characters listed. aside from a very limited example pool like Peach, each character has what, 0-1 character-tech? in Melee, Brawl, or PM/P+, each character uses their unique movesets in intricate ways to CREATE character-specific tech, see Third Chair's "Character Tech Guide" series and you'll see characters like Samus can have 20+ character specific tech. comparing Ultimate, all of this is stripped away to make the movesets THEMSELVES the only defining characteristics, not the tech they might create - which in itself is a problem because you'll have, for all intents and purposes, 5 Marths when you rely solely on moveset to differentiate the characters.
Amazing to me that 16 people liked your comment assuming it's unironic. Other people pretty much already covered this but I would like to nail home how ridiculous you're being to compare ultimate and melee tech.
Half or more of what you listed takes 0 practice to execute such as charge cancel and you also repeated things in your list such as dash walk, whatever tf that is. Additionally, most of what you listed that's actually practical like jump cancelled up smash can be done in melee.
Finally, if someone spent the time to list out every tiny little version of every tech in melee like you did for ultimate, they'd have to write a book not a comment filled with redundancy. For example, I could list:
- wavedash (normal length)
- wavedash (short length)
- wavedash (max length)
- dash into wavedash (normal length)
- dash into wavedash (short length)
- dash into wavedash (max length)
- wavedash into dash (normal length)
- wavedash into dash (short length)
- wavedash into dash (max length)
And that's not even scratching the surface but is similarly redundant to your comment. Point is, enjoy ultimate all you want but acting like it has a shit ton of tech is just plain silly
Armada: "There's no buffer in real life"
But isn't a game supposed to be an escape into fantasy?
@@ultrairrelevantnobody1862 Perhaps.
But is there a buffer in real life?
@@goodiesohhi
A lot of comments say so.
But there is buffer in real life you can't instantly do things you still need a message from the brain to do things
I love your reaction videos/streams Armada, but it can be frustrating as a viewer sometimes because you often interrupt him to make a reaction to something, and don’t get the full context or assume about the point they’re making, and immediately close your mind to what they are saying. I’m not saying to agree with everyone, but I think that often the nuances of what people are saying gets missed. I felt that mainly with this video and the video about “balancing” melee.
Yes I feel that too. Often I feel like he just didn't fully understand what was being said or that he paused the video at the exact wrong moment
I felt Armada was not just reacting to Asus. It felt like he was responding to takes he sees often that are complained about Melee. For example when he was reacting about the game feeling like ass because of no buffer. He was responding towards everyone who had a distain for Melee because of that very reason, and we could see in the video itself Asus pulling examples from forums and such. So basically I feel he was reacting to those type of people as well.
Yeah, imo he’s not super open-minded in these reaction videos. It seems like he just made up his mind about things, which makes him rehash the same stuff in every reaction he does
Yes and no. It’s a reaction video, not an essay with mediated counter-arguments. We’re seeing Armada’s reactions, whether knee-jerking or not, hence reaction video. He even said it’s his first time seeing the video. For me, I also consider the entertainment value in his video. His knee jerk reaction is partly for entertainment to me.
It’s his video man he can do whatever he wants. We’re the ones that decided to sit here for half an hour and watched it 😂
People don't complain about buffer because they feel entitled to be able to do everything without practice, it's because they want to be able to do anything.
@@poleve5409they are saying that buffer makes them feel like they just can't play properly, not just them being unable to do advanced techs, but unable to do basic stuff that feels like they should be able to without having to put tons of effort in.
That they don't feel entitled to advanced tech but to basic actions that they do not manage to perform which makes it off-putting
"I feel like we're repeating points"
You're repeating points because you paused every single time you slightly disagreed with something rather than just waiting to hear what was said next. Half the time the video went on to say the same thing you just said. You agreed with the video more than you even realized while watching it. Lol
Melee is sick
u are sick for saying melee is sick
@@JavierPwnsyou are sick for saying he's sick for saying he's sick for saying melee is sick
@@zacharymccloskey9498 you are sick for saying he's sick for saying he's sick for saying he's sick for saying melee is sick
it's aight =w=
Melee is sick
Without playing his punish game is superb in everything he does.
Announcer: "Armada's watching in neutral.. hits the spacebar and goes for a punish!"
I don't think he was claiming you had 100% dashbacks haha
Real Life has a buffer system many refer to as “thinking”.
For example, say I’m on a trampoline. Jump up and before landing I think “I want to jump again” so I do exactly that as soon as I land. In Melee, it’s more like “when I land I have to jump exactly after landing or else I won’t jump at all.”
See the problem? I love this game, but that’s very unintuitive to modern players and may discourage them, heavily affecting the growth of the Melee community.
hacks
I feel like melee has that same buffer. You know, hey, I'm in the air, would I like to double jump or would I like to jump again when I hit the ground?
idk dawg.
it's not that it has to be "exactly" after. it just has to be after and not before.
so there's no thinking in melee? i don't get this arguement
assuming there IS buffer in real life, then the buffer would be really *really* small
Bro Adam, you gotta let the video breathe a little more. When he’s in the middle of a counter argument you pause and talk about how he’s wrong before he can ever finish his point. Like you’d probably agree with more of what he’s saying if you didn’t interrupt every 2 sentences. Maybe watch the video in segments, like this one was broken up into parts, complete one THEN pause in between and discuss your thoughts
"That clip, that is sick. Smoky is sick" the way he said this is beautiful
The only time I ever think of playing Brawl is to play Subspace Emissary. If Melee or any of the later smash games had good single player maybe people would feel the same about them as well
I need to comment on something regarding single player
Yes the main draw for smash,or any fighting game for that matter,is the multiplayer...but having varied and fun single player is super important too imo especially for the casual crowd.
And lets face it,nowadays,especially in today's climate where getting local multiplayer is no longer a safe option, its more important than ever to give a fighting game more value that justifies the 60$ price tag instead of releasing a skeleton of a product like vanilla sf5
There are tons and tons of people who,while enjoy casual/competitive sessions of smash, also spent time fiddling around other modes from time to time whether they view the trophy gallery,replay subspace emissary in brawl or adventure mode in melee....etc.
It helps when a game give the player more options other than just staring at Arcade mode or vs mode on a menu wondering which to pick if they dont feel like competing at the time
The thing about the "real life" example is that real life doesn't have input delay in the way that playing a game does. Meaning that trying to "jump as soon as you land" in a game actually already means having to make your input before actually landing if you want to do it as soon as possible. It's a slight incongruity that we're stuck with in this format. Given that I can see having a buffer being a healthy option. We just don't have to go to insanely large buffer windows like Smash has adopted to the point where it causes about as many problems with input registry as it's trying to solve.
I see Armada has a habit of not using the word objective properly even though he uses it all the time.
Moon well he’s a non native English speaker so there should be some leniency
to be fair English isn't his first language
Objectively he's not using objectively properly
ahmost 22 he speaks English very well, I don't believe you can use his native language as an excuse.
He's just not using it properly despite his clear understanding of words and what they mean (the meaning and usage of words such as objective don't change based on the language being used), like when he said that a game bring objectively good or bad comes down to personal preference, which makes no sense. If its personal preference if a game is good or bad (which its not), then he should have used the word *subjective* when he made that point.
@@boyishdude1234 I think he meant that it is objective that liking a game or not comes down to preference. What do you mean he has a clear understanding of the word but is using it wrong? Are you impying that he's being deceptive in some way? Because that's how your comment reads.
That's a good point Armada made. When they lower the skill ceiling, the pros will still play better than casuals.
With video games and shows whenever they make something appeal to just kids it ruins it for mature audiences. But when they make something more challenging, technical, mature, etc. Then its fun for both.
Its like when Nintendo makes Zelda games super easy so kids can play them too.
My sister plays smash super casually, despite my playing the game competitively, and she really likes melee more because she likes a lot of the original movesets for characters like sheik and peach, and she also likes some of the stages in the game that aren't in ultimate, like pokefloats. So melee does still have its charms, even for casuals.
When I was a kid, I loved both Melee and Brawl. It took me a while to enjoy Brawl on the same level purely because it didn't have Pichu and Mewtwo like Melee did. I was so happy they brought Pichu back into Ultimate.
I'm really curious about "original movesets for characters like Sheik and Peach" tbh
Peach has nearly the exact same moveset in Ultimate that she does in Melee, and Sheik, while there are some changes in her specials, is largely the same, if not MORE unique with the introduction of Bouncing Fish (granted, I much /prefer/ transform characters like Shiekda, but Zelda is so laughably bad in Melee that Sheik is basically just one character)
now don't get me wrong, I'm not here to defend Ultimate, and one of my biggest gripes with it are how samey the characters are (see: every Fire Emblem rep). especially with the intentional stripping of character-tech, relying solely on very samey movesets to set characters apart. I'm just really curious how that logic applies to your anecdote, especially with the examples you gave.
@@vicksin if you’ve played sheik in melee and in ultimate then you’d know that they are wildly different characters. Saying they have the same moveset is like saying that fox and falco have the same moveset in melee. Sure, the animations are the same, but the way the characters play are completely different. Peach is a bit closer but still plays a bit differently from game to game. For another example, I have a friend who plays Luigi in melee and can’t even wavedash (hence would be considered casual) but doesn’t enjoy him in ultimate. The same is true for most marth enjoyers; even though the moves all look mostly the same, his sword is so much better in melee than in ultimate and he’s just more fun to use. The space animals and captain Falcon are good examples, too. Version differences are all over the place, even when you ignore the advanced tech in either game.
@@Jakerunio so all of that and you haven't actually mentioned what about the character is any different
yes the move ~animations~ are different but that doesn't actually mean much
upair is a multihit, fair changed from kill move with broken angle into combo move, dair is a stallnfall, etc., but the character's archetype is largely the same. if anything, I think Peach is much further from her Melee counterpart than Sheik, since she relies heavily on turnip drop combos - her Melee self, while loving to use turnips, builds up percent AND finds kills in entirely different ways
what separates the characters (mostly) is the engine itself.
especially when you make the "Falco/Fox are the same" argument, they're literally clones. most /casuals/ DO see them as the same.
from our perspective as competitive players, Marth and Lucina are EXTREMELY different characters by design, despite having the exact same moveset. this isn't something a /casual/ player would pick up on.
@@vicksin I actually said that the animations aren’t different, but that the moves are different. Sorry I didn’t list out every single difference of every character in a short TH-cam comment.
Sheik’s moves don’t link together well or feel rewarding to hit in ultimate. In fact, they do such little damage that even casual players notice the difference. In melee she had very solid moves on their own that happened to interact well together, whereas in ultimate her moves all do nothing and you have to string together 14 hits to do the damage a bowser fsmash does. Lemme tell ya, that feels bad especially to a casual player who is gonna get hit by that bowser fsmash and will struggle to do anything with sheik, let alone what void can do (and he barely makes the character look playable, it’s just so much effort geez).
The peach argument is non-casual since casuals won’t play towards z-dropping turnips for float combos. I’d suggest that most casuals probably see her as the same but upgraded in many ways.
Fox and Falco were “clones” in melee, but function completely differently. A casual can instantly tell that their moves all have different properties. Some easy things to notice: falco’s laser stuns, his down air hits hard instead of being a drill, fox is much faster than falco, falco’s down tilt is stronger and fox’s upsmash is stronger, and if ever you shine someone you’ll instantly see the difference in those. Obviously competitive players know the nuanced differences, but even a casual can immediately figure out that they don’t play the same way.
Captain Falcon and Ganondorf are the same in that regard, and even more blatantly obvious. Link and Young Link, too. They all have major differences. Marth/Roy and Mario/Dr. Mario are probably the clones who are closest to their counterpart, but even then it’s nothing like the echo fighters in ultimate that have only the smallest of differences in their kits. Like you can’t tell me or any casual player that fox and falco in melee are comparable to pit and dark pit in ultimate, and so on. The point being, even the clone characters in melee are more distinct and interesting than most of the newcomers in ultimate, and ultimate puts “clones” in melee to shame with echo fighters.
A note to myself to always clearly state when I am playing Devil's Advocate if I ever make a similar video to AsumSaus's lol. I was facepalming so hard on most of the times Armada paused to "agree to disagree" on something the video was never actually trying to claim lol. At least there was a part where he seemed confused and wondered if he was misunderstanding something (I'm fairly certain he was, indeed, misinterpreting the point of the video). I'd love to see him come back to this at some point to address some of these criticisms I've been seeing in the comments!
With regards to your comment at 47:00, I don’t think that Melee’s short development time should be taken into account when trying to assess its quality. It makes its flaws more understandable but it in no way excuses them. It’s like if I tried to bake a cake by lighting the batter on fire directly to speed it up. It probably tastes awful, and the fact that I saved 5 minutes in baking time by lighting the batter on fire rather than using an oven isn’t an excuse for how bad it tastes.
"Tons of people actually don't want a deeper and more freeform (game)"
See, I don't think that's true, for one simple reason: Most people who hate on Melee don't actually hate the game, but what it represents in the community. This was especially obvious during the Smash 4 days; to many fans of the latter, Melee was the enemy, it took the spotlight, was constantly being brought up as a better game and the Melee community was super toxic to them. It's very comparable to the "genwunner" phenomenom in Pokémon in that way.
In other words, most Smash fans you hear saying advanced techniques are bad say so because within the franchise, they're seen as a characteristic of Melee, and they've grown to dislike everything it represents. I mean, they celebrated when Melee was taken off Evo, like, what more needs to be said? To my knowledge, no other fighting game franchise faces problems of people complaining that the game is too deep.
Of course as you said, those people exist. But there's not "tons" of them imo.
Well okay, I think there's a big difference between "approachable" and "hands you everything".
Some of the hardest games ever made still have generous buffer. I mean, I think it's fairly similar to the whole "hard vs unfair" debate.
Often times people will say that "hard but fair" meant you died, but you knew what you did wrong and you knew it was your fault. If you died from missing a 2 frame window with no buffer, you don't have any way of knowing if you were too early or too late, or if some wires in the controller got disconnected and your input didn't register at all. You can still have extremely precise controls at high-level play while still making the game feel responsive to casual players. I mean, that's largely how you _get_ high-level players, it makes new players want to come back.
You want your game to feel expressive, like you're in control of what your character does, and while high-level players sing Melee's praises for that exact reason, new players feel the opposite. If you're looking at a game as a whole, how the game treats new players should be one of the factors considered, and I think Melee leaves a lot to be desired.
I forget he mentioned it, but I’d argue that learning all the tech that’s included with Melee is exploring more of the game than items which is a fair point to make.
Not only that, but all the tech is optional in a casual setting, so it literally has the best of both worlds: a fun casual game to play with friends and, completely separately, a highly technical competitive game.
Fighting games have tried to find this balance for decades and Sakurai did it by accident and then refused to ever develop upon it.
Miselus what do you mean sakurai did it unintentionally? The majority of the "techniques" in Melee are unintended bugs and exploits. Of course a game designer wouldn't want to develop on bad game design. They'd want to fix the issues so the next game is more polished.
@@boyishdude1234 They are exploits that make the game better for many people than the way he intended for it to be played. As far as I'm concerned, Sakurai not exploring some of the exploits (including intentional ones inherited from 64) and a faster game in following Smash games is a complete failure on his part, making Brawl, Smash 4 and Ultimate replaceable games with no depth.
Couldn't give a shit if he wanted them or not, the exploits and physics engine of Melee make the game better.
@@RDV333 but the point is, if you want to learn all that stuff, it's a huuuuuuuge mountain to climb
@@boyishdude1234 SF2 combos were unintentional bugs, Just because they were bugs doesnt mean they're bad game design. They added to the depth of the game and were better for it
The problem is that you're taking what he's saying as talking about opinion, when the title of the video is trying to objectively ask, is Melee good? Because while no buffer system definitely makes the game better (in my opinion) competitively, it's hard to argue it makes the game as a whole better. This also applies to everything else in the video.
Yes it does. Play for five days and you don’t even notice the no buffer anymore. People who complain about it literally just started playing
@@HieronymousLex I play melee everyday, I think no buffer really benefits the game, but casually I imagine it feels awful.
@@HieronymousLex I've tried going back to Melee before and the difference is more staggering than what you make it out to be. Even just going back to Brawl for me now is jarring and takes me a very long time to get used to.
@@amadeus.7436 I remember being jarred when I first played melee as a sm4sh kid. If you’re willing to just play for a week I’m telling you, you’d get used to it. Eventually, it becomes the other way around where melee feels by far the most precise
My general take when it comes to mainly the buffer system in melee / general complexity in inputs of "cool things" is that these "cool things" should generally be accessible to players at large if they are interested in them without much invested time, but how they're used at higher level play is the more important aspect in viewing if something was indeed, "cool".
Take for example, Celeste. The game has many mechanics tailored to making the game forgiving in inputs, allowing for freedom in movement, and having many different "cool things" for people to learn. But overall the difficulty to pick these things up isn't extremely difficult and require insane amounts of invested time unless you are gearing for the top of the top. To compare, a lot of that same level of movement in melee requires a lot more time to even get semi consistent at without necessarily being able to work on other less technical aspects of the game, like neutral play or understanding common opponent behaviors.
If melee had UCF with a generalized buffer system of +3-4 frames, more closely similar to smash 4 (which I feel had the sweetspot of buffer length), then the game would improve substantially for a general playerbase not wholely focused on top competitive play.
Likewise if ultimate had its buffer slightly turned down by like 2-3 frames and giving it a more functional wavedash / shield drop / etc., then that game as well would improve significantly compared to what it is now.
Underrated comment ngl
It takes a few days tops to get used to no buffer and you’ll never think about it again. Why do people need so many small barriers to entry removed to play but will happily spend their time getting owned in dark souls or rocket league etc. It’s simply not as bad as you think it is, it’s barely worth mentioning. Like I said, within days you’ll never think about buffer again
@@HieronymousLex See that's the thing, in your perspective since I'm assuming you've gotten normalized to melee's mechanics, you think that the lack of a buffer only takes "a few days" or is a small barrier of entry, when I'm arguing that it isn't the case for either. I've taken multiple days of trying out melee without being able to acclimate to the lack of a buffer. It's a large barrier of entry for me, and definitely many others.
I would not play Melee with a buffer system tbh. Would feel like ass
"Imagine you jump in real life and try to jump again before you land. You're not going to jump a second time." Lol so true
You would prepare your legs for the second jump, or if you wanna like, punch something you would start preparing the punch and when you land realease it. It's in human nature to do something and prepare the next, we are not "frame perfect", we buffer things
@@auroraanshi639 Yes, but you have to actually execute with proper timing. You prepare your fingers for the next input on the controller, but the game won't do it for you, just like you don't straighten your leg to jump before landing
@@auroraanshi639 just go back to ultimate if the buffer is really that bad for you. You don’t even notice it after a week of playing
Why don't people praise Melee's combo system as much as they praise the movement options?
No other smash game has the same interaction between player getting comboed and player comboing. They don't come close to the degree of mixups/improvisation in combos or the amount of options to escape combos that Melee has.
In other smash games (Brawl, Sm4sh, Ultimate) most of the moves have too much Base knockback to lead into another hit, unless the designer made it so "this move leads into this move", like "down-throw leads to up-tilt and then up-air". Making combos lack variety/improvisation by design. The player getting comboed has very little to do outside of doing the proper DI for the one or two combo strings the opponent's character is designed to use, and then Air Dodging to reset neutral.
In Melee, not only is that problem with base knockback nonexistent, making all moves theoretically combo into any move (depending on weight, fall speed & percent) but it also gives the player getting comboed a lot more options to escape like sliding off platforms, SDI, and Amsah teching, making the interactions between the players engaging even after neutral.
No buffer doesn't ruin it for me, but it does make the experience significantly more frustrating than it otherwise could have been. I like games with ridiculously high tech skill ceilings, I play Gunz. It's not about doing what the pros do, or that no buffer doesn't facilitate me being instantly being able to do all that advanced tech. It's about buffering simply being standard platforming game design for good reason: it prevents inputs from being eaten, and better reconciles player input/intent with what actually happens. See Celeste, the very difficult and ultra precise platformer. They do so much fudging like buffering and coyote time to make the movement system have good gamefeel.
As Armada says around12:40, most of the time you don't need to be anywhere near frame perfect. Very few important moves require a frame perfect input; the vast majority are perhaps made better by being closer to frame perfect, but that's exactly how a competitive fighting game should be.
@@DrunkenHotei Except Smash Bros. leans heavily on the casual side. It's an entry point for people to get into fighting games without having to start with something as difficult as a traditional fighting game. Generous buffers are needed to help people on the way.
@@amadeus.7436 In Melee, the vast majority of moves have no buffer though. P+ has one frame, I think (which makes a huge difference), and I've never played Ultimate.
Pretty sure SSB64 doesn't have buffer for almost all moves, but it's been 25 years since I've played it lol
@@DrunkenHotei So what's your point? Melee was a long time ago and used to be the casual's entry-level game but isn't anymore compared to what exists today. People have developed new standards as far as game-feel and general mechanics go.
I guess the viewpoint just depends on with what eyes you judge Melee. The ones you got now or the ones from 20 years ago.
@@amadeus.7436 Oh, I never considered the party-style form of play with items and such if that's what you meant. I was strictly referring to modern, competitive play, which I'd say is far from good for an entry to fighting games given how unforgiving it is in terms of frames and angles like shield drops and wavelanding.
You could argue the originally-intended playstyle is good for beginners, but I'd argue it's so different that it's hardly even a fighting game and more of a party game without the modern restrictions.
If I'm being honest, the most annoying thing for me, someone who doesn't play Melee, when people describe Melee is when they call techs glitches. Some of them ARE technically exploits, yes, but an exploit isn't a glitch. There's a difference between the two, and it annoys me when people forget that.
not only that, but wayyy too often people will reference intentional mechanics as glitches lol, like l-canceling
I have 2 main thoughts on this. My first thought is that I always loved the smash games because they always felt like creativity in how you played characters was what could make you better than another player unlike in traditional fighting games where it’s always about extended combo mastery. In melee as harder tech was discovered the games started to lose the “win by being creative and unique” aspects and turned into a combo or timing game similar to a traditional fighter. My second thought is as melee developed and was learned the characters who you could win with (at the higher level of play) became a short list which again took away from the heart of what smash is, differnt types of characters all with the chance to win if played well enough and with enough creativity and level of dedication. I truly believe the layman fell in love with smash games because, although they took skill to master, they weren’t as overwhelmingly difficult as traditional fighter games with long combos you had to memorize, with smash it always sorta felt like you could jump in and have a chance to win because of the uniqueness of the game. All that changed tho as the harder tech was introduced, it became like a traditional fighter with the thought process being “memorize a set of moves/combos to win” vs “use the creative aspects of a unique character to win”
Hey, I think it would be awesome if you atcually tried to put every character in Melee into an archetype. I've tried it for a bit and you can really see how extremely diverse every character is.
Wow, this is actually a really interesting idea!
You know, normally I really enjoy Armada's take in these reaction videos, but in this video I disagreed with almost every single thing he said. He isn't grasping the fact that AsumSaus isn't talking about the players that want to be competitive but don't want to put in the effort to grind it. AsumSaus is trying to (as objectively as possible, from his subjective vantage point) decide whether he can place Melee as one of his favorites of all time. The arguments Armada makes may be valid, but he's so steeped in the competitive game modes that he's really not getting the arguments that AsumSaus is making. It's frustrating to listen to because he's (ironically) limiting his perspective while interacting with the video, even though he implies he's not because he used to play casually.
Sorry Armada, you just didn't get it on this one
I mainly don't get his "it doesn't matter if the game was meant to be played some way" argument. Yes, it shouldn't matter how a game was "meant" to be played, but it still matters when looking at the perspective of the game designers. the game engine alone defines what can and can't be done by the game, so some developers take specific things into mind when making the game. I'm sure nobody at HAL knew the implications of dashback or wavedashing on the greater extent of Melee's legacy, so they didn't optimize those actions in the same way games designed for competitive play are. He also brings up the combo system of Street Fighter, which, despite also starting as something unintended, was something that the developers made into an important mechanic, and thus they built the game around that and optimized the engine and characters for it. That's the difference between how a game is and is not designed to be played.
i disagree, i agreed with a lot of the stuff armada said. armada even said if you're someone who values single player then yes ranking smash lower would make sense but most everyone plays it for the multiplayer, one of my favorite games is black ops 2, loved the multiper, but i didnt even touch the campaign, doesnt mean bo2 isnt one of my favorite games because i didnt like all the content it had to offer. and about the casual thing, the deeper a game is to learn doesnt make it a bad casual game, theyre not really related imo. now of course if a casual were to play against a pro he wouldnt have a good time, but against other casual players, the depth of the game doesnt even come into question.
And what you don't seem to get is that Armada is disagreeing with Asum. He's allowed to have his opinions as well. I personally don't agree with many of Asum's views here, nor with how he presented them. I thought he tried a little too hard to play both sides of the aisle, and that's my opinion.
@@hypernova0332 I think quite a few people have problems with Armada's viewpoints because they come off as sort of elitist in a way. Like when he talks about the part where Asum talks about game quirks that make it more difficult to perform basic actions, it sounds like he's dismissing something like a jumpsquat buffer with the argument that people had to play without it for two decades, when it would only benefit everyone if simple conveniences like those were added, thus it sounds (not saying it is) like an arrogant git gud to people who don't want to deal with it.
@@noahdomingo1162 Yes, but not only does Armada come off that way, it's also genuinely not great game design and something developers have learned from.
Armada is basically saying that "because game morphed into this thing that I enjoy at the highest level, yes it's good" but that wasn't Asum's point. His point was, as objectively as he could define it, outside of the rest of the things that have been weeded out and poked and prodded at by the community to CURATE a playable competitive scene that has happened to flourish, outside of all THAT stuff, the REST of the game (which is a good majority of the game and also what most of its audience would be playing) is not very good. So I think most of the people above aren't necessarily wrong. You can still agree with Armada here. But Armada is arguing on the wrong axis. That's why I didn't like this video. Because Armada and Asum aren't talking about the same things.
When Asum says, "outside of this community curated stuff, is it good? Does it hold up? No" , Armada doesn't get to just then say, "because this stuff is good, that makes the whole thing good." That's not a valid argument and clearly Armada is not getting the point.
The thing with the buffer and no buffer system is just what you're used to. I don't remember having any issues with inputs when i played N64 smash or melee back in the day, likely because i was used to having no buffers so my timing of button presses was naturally a bit slower. However now that i've gotten used to playing games with buffer systems i have it programmed pretty hard in my muscle memory to press buttons slightly before the previous action ends so i always have moves come out the fastest possible timing, so if i went back to games without buffers i would likely face the same issues people were voicing in this video. I don't think you can argue that melee is objectively bad because of having no buffer systems since it comes down to what youre used to.
"Melee is like real life" lol
When was the last time you went to grab a pen and the world just said no (barring medical issues). If you are doing something else at the same time it might take a little extra time to grab your pen, but you still complete the action eventually. That's a buffer. Buffers are more like human life.
* multi shines in real life *
AsumSaus's vids are so good. His enthusiasm for melee is infectious as he picks apart what really is a very messy game.
This is the game review version of "It looks like an apple, smells like an apple, tastes like an apple, feels like an apple, sounds like an apple. Hmm I think it's an orange."
Would love a smash game that added a custom stage builder that let you make target test courses, or other mini game type things and share them online. idk why this was removed entirely in later entries rather than being expanded on.
I I think the point of AsumSaus' video was not to say that Melee was bad and unenjoyable, I think the point was mainly the idea that a game can be amongst the most enjoyable games, without being amongst the best or most polished games, and that the two concepts don't have to be conflated together. For example at the start of the video you went into detail about Melee's depth, and while depth inherently allows for more potential enjoyment, the presence of depth does not inherently mean improved quality or polish.
I definitely agree that there are a lot of people who hate on Melee unnecessarily and unfairly when they say things like 'Melee is just a buggy mess' or suggest that Melee can't possibly be enjoyable because it's unpolished. Again, the problem comes from conflating enjoyment with quality, and the two are not always implicit of each other. Just because Melee is unpolished doesn't mean it can't be fun and hype, and just because it's fun and hype doesn't mean it's a good quality game.
Stating that Melee is unenjoyable or nothing but a mess is flat-out wrong, but I don't think that stating Melee is a great game is correct either. It definitely has its fair share of functional and impactful issues, and there is a strong argument to be made for accessibility being a necessary tenet of a 'great game', especially a family party game such as Smash. Melee is arguably but probably one of the most fun games in existence, and I suppose if that is the only criteria one looks at, then there is a reasonable case to say that Melee is a good game as a result. But there is a difference between measuring a good game for yourself, and a good game for a general layperson audience/the totality of the game's market.
Btw I have not played Melee, I've only played Ultimate, but I still would argue pretty easily that Melee is probably more fun than Ultimate. Nor will I say 'Ultimate is a great game but not fun', because neither of those things are true, but I won't get into that here.
To clarify I am saying that Melee is not a great game, but I am not saying that it's a bad game. Its merits definitely outweigh its downsides, but not the the point where I would consider it 'great' or include it in any sort of 'best games' list. It's a good game, but just good.
Melee is a great game. It's still a mess considering Sakurai and the dev team had to meet deadlines but it's a mess we can still enjoy
I have started practicing melee recently, and I found out so much on my own without looking up how to do certain tech amd how different is to play one or another character. It really is something else, and even practicing it it's own fun, since I have bad internet connection and can't play most games online. All the stuff people who haven't even tried melee, about it's clunkyness and weird ass tech, it's just like leveling up; having more options to do and mastering the techniques. I have hope that the mentallity that deeper game mechanics are better for a game than having low skill celling would be better for Ultimate, to spice up things a bit but still being it's own game, like edge canceling and reducing the lag on landing airdodge, cause that would make it more interesting than it already is. Plus, having to play any game for such a long time and learing other isn't much of a problem, like I'm learning and getting good at tech much faster that novice at smash, or any fighting game would. So yea, getting more tech to ultimate wouldn't be a problem, even if it's at the end of it's dlc lineup
Melee is good as competitive as it is, but everything else is somewhat lack luster compared to the later smash games.
The slowness of the characters in brawl(especially the jumping) made the single player not as fun for me even if it was a bigger more expansive expierence. I don't know why everyone always talks as if casual players don't notice any difference between melee and brawl. I as a european had never heard of the competitive melee scene when brawl came out, but me and my friends still noticed that brawl was a huge departure from melee that made every aspect of the game worse. Which is why i would argue melee's single player is still a better then brawls, even if brawl looks better on paper(or too some who don't care about slow floaty characters i suppose).
Melee's movement, even without advanced tech, feels way better than Smash games after Brawl, which are floaty, slow, favour defense centric neutrals and sometimes punish the player for being skillfull (tripping in Brawl, Rage in Smash 4, buffer in Ultimate). I'll trade all the content in the world built around a poor foundation for a game with lesser content but a stronger set of gameplay mechanics.
I say this without nostalgia either: my first Smash game was Brawl and I remember it being too slow, so I dropped it. Smash 4 was the same: too floaty, aerial movement constantly interrupted pacing. But I played Melee and my eyes were open. it was so much more satisfying to play that I could just play without items against cpus for hours without getting bored.
At the end of the day, Sakurai made a better gameplay system in Melee by accident than he has ever done aftewards in any Smash game. But instead of using it, like the MOBA community did with its own gameplay model, he shamed part of the fanbase, leading to all future games being replaceble by the next, because they have no depth. Brawl died when Smash 4 came out and Smash 4 died when Ultimate came out; so will Ultimate upon the next entry. All of this to replace a movement system that is better than any other the Smash franchise has ever had. Why not expand it? Why not include tutorials to reduce the entry barrier? Nah, just remove it for a shittier system.
There's many people that still play Melee, even though it has less content that the games that came after it, but no one will bother with Brawl, Smash 4 or even Ultimate after a while, because they are games made to be replaced. Yet another case where demand and depth are confused with poor design and bad controls and are corrected with shitty systems like high buffering that reward lack of skill and reduce depth and development of a game in the future, leaving them to be abandoned and pointless.
@@rzzzdc5865 I never played melee when it came out, just 64 and some brawl with my friends, and even then (I was like 13 or something) I noticed, at least with the characters I was familiar with in 64, that they felt really slow and bad in brawl.
@Walter Wacaser HomeRunContest in melee is way better than Ultimate one
I don't play melee for single player. I don't play SC2 for single player. I don't play League of Legends for singleplayer. Hell people like Blur aren't even playing Slay The Spire for singleplayer but to compete on leaderboards with other players. Same with like 99% of people still playing Mario 64
It's such a STUPID FUCKING ARGUMENT to make and this was such a stupid fucking video
"So chat said this one's actually good"
literally 5 minutes later:
B R U H
They go by the quote “don’t hate the player, hate the game”
I very much agree with Armada about the beginning of the video (in regards to the take that "Melee isn't great just because its competitive mode is so good"). To me, especially with Melee specifically, it takes a culmination of many great aspects to create the amazing "competitive mode" that we all know. Only a great game would have each of these aspects and allow for the depth of interactions like what's found in Melee. Melee's greatness isn't defined by its competitive mode. It's the exact opposite: Melee's greatness is what defines its competitive mode.
In general, I dislike this argument altogether... Basically, they're trying to punish games that have a strength that over shines the rest of it. For example, let's say that there's a game where most of it is a respectable 7/10, but one major area/world/aspect (whatever part you care about) is straight-up an 11/10. As a result, after a few years when the game is less relevant, people who still play the game are only focusing on that one area that was Ann 11/10. Does that suddenly mean that the rest of the game is worse than a 7? Of course not! Games should not be punished for having one thing be better than everything else... if anything, that makes them more memorable and stand out more. (And again, this is especially true in Melee, where it's not even "one thing" above the rest because the competitive ruleset is only made possible because of how every aspect of the game is able to work together in order to create it).
AsumSaus was arguing that Melee isn't good because everything other than it's competitive mode is more or less shit.
Si short answer: melee hasn't age well and it's outdated for Bad, except competitive, that's sick.
It's a problem of definition to me.
In Armada's eyes a game is great because "it's capable of doing this one thing I like". In Asumsaus' eyes that same game wouldn't be great because "it does one thing I like and 20 things I dislike".
The point in of itself is subjective and is unnecessary to bring up really.
Holy shit he must have so much grain lying around from all those straw man arguments he’s putting up. We don’t want to be able to do it on command immediately. We just want to be able to play the fucking game.
In that case would you say cyberpunk 2077 is a great game because it’s playable???
Yeah... that argument is it’s own strawman.
@@mrepicdood9953 Saying an argument is a strawman by creating a strawman...
Strawception?
@@ExaltedUriel It’s an example, my friend.
@@mrepicdood9953 Sure.
Is it worth playing Melee and learning all it’s tech skill? will it benefit a player going forward to play Ultimate or a Smash that could appear in the future?
or is it just useless and only works for Melee. Because sometimes I can’t ever shorthop so I always have to do the button bind of X+Y on Ultimate or more controlled air attacks because I feel mine are too slow sometimes or I don’t know when a fast fall is needed to make them connect better.
Playing against friends I do fine, but none of us are god tier players we just understand the game and know how to work all the buttons. But these small things make me wonder.
I was there when you reacted to it on twitch the other day
brawl had such a good singleplayer experience ;( now im nostalgic,
and now that i looked up what dacus is, yes we did figure it out eventually as semi casual players while only playing with friends, and when we did discover it we felt like we had discovered an amazing cool trick,
but no characters i personally played could do the trick
edit: also i learned a lot about melee in this video and it was really enlightening , and helped me summarize nicely what feels off about ultimate even though i wouldnt be able to pinpoint it myself.
Great content, watched the whole thing
Going by this PM(P+) is the best game since it has alot of melee mechanics and brawl single player
Also Armada please consider coming back to P+ tournaments once lockdowns are over. We miss the Swedish sniper.
I think the abundance of characters slows down the meta progression too much which results in less "sick" gameplay
After watching his vid, I really want him to do a follow up on his thoughts of PM/P+. Personally, it’s my favorite smash experience
imo, pm and p+ might have melee mechanics but nonetheless feels still a bit clunky and heavy
And yet we all played melee as children and loved it
The skill gap argument works like this: in Ultimate or Smash4, you are overwhelmed by the mind games and combos of the pros. In Melee, you are overwhelmed by mind games, combos, movement, and combos with movement. It’s a simplification, but I think it makes some sense
The comparison of buffer to real life is so stupid to me personally. When we play a game we aren't hooking our brains directly into the console, we're holding a _controller_ in our hands. The mark of a game having good controls is a casual player not noticing these issues, which as the video demonstrates, they do when they pick up Melee. As you say yourself when addressing the "narrowing the gap between casuals and pros" line, adding a buffer isn't going to magically make casuals capable of high-level movement, it's just going to make the game not feel like ass to play when you haven't put thousands of hours into mastering the _basic controls_ . Not high-level movement, just the lack of buffer.
You mentioned that casual players wouldn’t play against competitive players, but in Ultimate that’s just not true. Battle Arenas often pit the two types of players together and as long as you’re playing enough online casually you’ll still run into competitive quick matches and the like. This is especially true when the match making can’t find direct matches for rules and end up putting casuals in competitive rule sets. The problem does stem from the online functionality however it is something worth considering when discussing whether advanced movement techniques have a place in the more accessible Smash titles like Ultimate.
So your goal is again to lessen the gap? A competitive player vs a casual player only will end one way no matter how much you try to remove advanced tech. It’s not a good reason to remove it.
@@HieronymousLex This comment is almost a year old so I don’t know what my initial goal was. I just remember that Ultimate’s online can unintentionally push casuals and newcomers into fights with competitive players due to its design. And that it’s important to factor that in when designing tech to be accessible and understandable to a new audience.
1:05:49 I don't know why but I laughed really hard when I heard Armada say that. Feel like I never hear the guy swear.
Hey Armada, I have a question. Have you ever watched Sajam's rants on fighting games? Coming out of those a lot of the things you talked about in this video reminded me of things he talked about and lined up with things he said, and in their own right are interesting analysis of these issues.
Its true melee is like real life! I called a plumber Mario and he best the shit out of me just like Mario!
/r/cursedcomments
Armada is so far above casual play that he does not understand the argument in the video
Just cause I don't agree with him does not make me unable to understand his side to the argument.
As stated in the video but let me repeat.
I myself played Melee as a casual for years without knowing any of the secret tech, I also played video games casually since I was super young. I have played tons of hours with the perspective as a casual gamer, I do fully understand but don't agree with him, it's a clear difference
@@UGSArmada You may still be such an outlier as far as talent and persistence goes that your perspective could still be... off?
@@UGSArmada It didn't seem like you acknowledged a lot of the points he was making in the beginning portion of the video, partly because of your own biases of playing it as a child, and becoming very comfortable with the system from a young age. Specifically, the points you made about the lack of a buffer system was combated with justifying the lack of a buffer system with real life. However, that didn't acknowledge that many people find issue with the lack of a buffer system because it's much harder to get a hold of than many contemporary games. Many people, myself included, have had a lot of trouble with the lack of buffer system. If someone doesn't have particularly good dexterity in their hands or is new to the system, it makes it much harder to play the game. Dropped inputs run rampant in many casual players games, all because of the lack of buffer. Just because you like it, equate it to real life, and got used to it at a young age, doesn't dispute his point of it being a more difficult barrier to play than it needed to be for newer players. Olivier probably made that point because you addressed a lot of points NEAR what the video discussed, but didnt actually comment on a few of the core ideas the video was basing it's argument on.
And to be clear:if I'm wrong and you did understand that, it wasnt communicated well in the video.
I ve never been to a tournament and I disagre with asumsaus’ points too.
@@talbotsolenberger4434 it seems like you are framing his reactions as "combative" from the start. maybe he's not trying to argue or "combat" the script directly, but just react? not every point is worth arguing over or requires people to agree. most of it we've already heard before anyways. no one ever said lack of buffer makes it easier for everyone. it seems like you just want hear him agree or say "good job" even if thats not his natural reaction?
I booted Melee back up recently from a new save file. Honestly the biggest thing I like more than newer games is how you can zip around the stage with some characters. Not a huge fan of things like jump squat and tap jump in general. Also the game for some reason has always made my eyes bleed if I play for an hour or so, which isn't something I've encountered with any other game.
Overall: Event mode is really fun, classic mode I actually prefer to be a 10 minute experience like in Melee, adventure mode isn't that great imo, and unlocking characters ranges from braindead easy to weirdly specific in some instances. I wish it played more smooth out of the box like Ult, but I know it can be worked around with enough time. I miss racecar Bowser and Fox's design/voice in general
So I started playing Smash competitively when Smash 4 came out (I know lul) and now that you mentioned it, I DEF went through at least 1 GC controller because of practicing perfect pivoting!
I get your comparison of melee to a sport but I think the complaint of skill depth mainly comes from people that havent been playing melee for fun for years. If a friend asks me to play melee, I just have to turn it down because even “casual” melee players at this point have the movement tech down while I feel like I’m moving on ice skates. To be fair, I’ve never called melee a bad game but I just can’t imagine having fun getting relentlessly shit on because something as simple as moving requires a manual.
i hope he reacts to more of asumsaus videos, they are worth the time watching
There is something about interesting to armada insight about anything
People can give feedback on the game and not be in the scene. The game exists in a casual setting whether you want it to or not, and the lack of a buffer can make casual players feel like the game is sabotaging them by not letting them perform their moves. The fact the computers can’t encounter this issue can make it pretty prevalent in a circumstance where that’s your main competitor.
100% agree, except what strictly casual player is playing Melee as their smash game of choice in 2023? from a casual perspective, the game with all the new characters from different franchises, more items and stages, etc is certainly more enticing.
if by "casual" you mean newer/low-level /competitive/ players, then I agree buffer can be a valid criticism, but that's the appeal of the game itself - it's more precise, demanding, and thus rewarding.
for example, in P+, there's an option to toggle "auto l-cancel", which does exactly what it sounds like, your character will always l-cancel aerials without the need for inputting any button. while this /definitely/ makes the barrier for entry lower, this is far less demanding, and thus not as rewarding. if you miss an l-cancel and get punished for it in Melee, that's literally just a case of being worse and needing to practice.
if you don't WANT to put in the time and practice Melee, instead opting for later iterations that are more user-friendly, this is a super valid take to have.
personally, I think Melee is SICK, and it's incredibly fun for me to watch, as a spectator. but with life as busy as it is, I don't have 40 hours a week to grind UnclePunch or what have you, so the game itself simply doesn't interest me to play, as even hopping on Slippi I'll just get absolutely bodied by the people that DO have the time to commit to playing this game as often as they do, which leaves absolutely nothing fun about the game left for me via GAMEPLAY, but again, WATCHING Melee is still some of the most fun I can have.
I think the casuals don't care about a buffer system. They just want to play the game. The issues don't register in their heads because they don't look for it. And I'd argue Melee is very casual friendly given how quickly you can just boot up the game and navigate its menus. Their isn't any wasted time in between selecting your mode and getting ready to play. It usually takes a minute at most to get where you need to be.
As for the gameplay, I think the lack of a buffer system makes it easier for players to play. You don't have to worry about the wrong move coming out way ahead of time. Like shielding on the ledge, only to get hit out and air dodge to your death when you didnt mean to. Moves are entirely reliant on your precision to make the next move in time after the next one. You know.......the stuff you do when playing ANY video game or real-life action (like jumping in sports). I think the younger generation relies too heavily on safety net features like this to get them out of jams instead of learning how to play the game. This wasn't an issue back in the day, and we had to learn how to play and had fun doing it. What's stopping new players? Kind of arrogant to call Melee "dated" when the arrogant kids of today can't be bothered to conquer it. Guess the primitive game is too complex for today's mindset of quick and easy learning.
You're not considering that many players want to play online. When Sakurai says he doesn't want people to get scared, he talks about online imo. When I strated playing SF4, online was so scary, because the game has a (relatively) high skillcap and a lot of tech is hard to apprehend for casuals. I, myself, am from the team grind, and it didn't stop me from playing and getting better, but for a developper, they have to be aware that a large amount of their player base will be pissed that they get bullied online... And I do realise people will still lose badly until they get good at the game, but the point is : they'll be able to easily understand and replicate what happened to them.
1:01:04 for micro movement in ultimate you can turbo tea bag. The tech was first found and explained by Marss and he explains how to do it in ultimate on his channel.
"Melee is life."
Its so true that more casual players won't notice more subtle criticisms asumsaus points out. I've played melee with tons of casual friends who couldn't tell notice lag on a non CRT TV. Only after playing melee with one of my friends for months did he actually comment that playing on anything but a CRT is unplayable.
The idea that melee is somehow bad for casuals is just not true. It was easily the most popular game on the gamecube and was incredibly formative for millions of people who never once turned off items or played competitively. The specific points brought up in the original video are incredibly overstated
People against Melee need to say it's bad casually because it's the only lement in which other Smash games could even begin to be better than Melee at, given their competitive scenes are painfully uninteresting. This is, of course, untrue, because Melee is a great casual game and I'd say the movement and physics make it an even more enjoyable causal game in the long run than other games in the series.
Well yeah, but Melee doesn't exist in a vacuum. Stuff that appeals to casuals, things like characters, stages, modes, are just simply better and more diverse in later installments. I don't think any casual would pick Melee over Ultimate, that doesn't make Melee a bad game by any means, but it certainly lacks in that regard within the context of the whole series.
"Most popular game on the gamecube" Comeptetive may have helped with that.
@@aarondx3764 The game sold a pretty insane amount in just a short amount of time within its release (for a GCN game at least), so Melee was already very popular way before the competitive scene was even a thing.
16:00. Dammit, I was so excited to try jumping in the air but since there’s no buffer system I can’t do it. Real life sucks
melee aged well compared to brawl and p m graphics wise in my opinion and i think the casual part of melee and solo mode and stuff are still better than smash 4
@@Point5_ yikes
Point 5 brawl graphic are the worst just after 64 it like realistic look but in 420p im happy melee doesn’t have the realistic look cuz it look like shit on old game like brawl
I love Melee but I feel the graphics are the one thing that aged poorly to be honest.
@@pikachu896 BRUUUUUUHHHHH
pikachu896 i think they look pretty good for the most part if you compare to brawl with the wanna be realistic look that look ugly as fck sure new game look better quite a bit but i do like melee graphics over brawl any day and i think the look of melee look pretty good to this day just different
As a whole, I like Melee as well as the rest of the Smash Bros games. Some of my friends and I got into the series as casuals and got better over time. A few even got into the competitive scene. It got to the point where those few only wanted to play competitively with tournament rule sets and stages.
After Melee, all they wanted to play was competitive 1v1s for every subsequent Smash game. I'm the type to try out all a game has to offer and they mocked me for it. Casual hangouts would turn toxic when they chose what and how to play.
Whenever I got frustrated at loosing, they would laugh and tell me that I'd like the game more if I got better at it, so I decided to get better.
Everytime I beat them and asked "Can we go back to having fun?", they would get all up in their feelings. How is it that I was able to learn how to handle loss and victory better than them when I've never entered the competitive scene? "Why can't we just play to have fun like back then?" is what I would ask them.
They were only able to call Melee a good game through only it's competitive aspect while I've always thought it was a good game overall. Like, they won't even touch Stage Builder or offline single player in Ultimate because they say that it's for people who aren't good at the game.
I like that video because it looks at Melee as a whole. Competitive 1v1s is not all Smash is and no one should act like they're better and/or talk down on others for wanting to play other modes (or even other games for that matter).
You missed the huge disclaimer text at 1:13
Real life isn't bufferless though? if i trip on something and am falling to the group, I don't immediately die if I fail to brace myself in the first 1/60 of a second.
And by the same, walking.
People walk in wildly different lengths and timing, if there where no buffer for when you could move your legs, people would be dying left and right because they're 500th step wasn't the exact same as their first.
this guy makes a lot of other good melee content if you ever wanna check it out
Adam “melee is life”
yeah, i think the point of narrow the gap between casuals and pros in any videogame is to make easier to casuals to perform cool moves they see from pro, not giving a casual vs pro a fair matchup.
And the way we consume sports like football (via broadcast) and the way we play, is SO different that most people dont bother that the casual football match on sunday doesnt looks like a professional match. And because in videogames the interface we see in a competitive match and the ones we play with makes people to want their game to look like a professional game. my point is not 'people want to play like pro without practicing' but more 'the way we consume sports and esports are different in such way that deeply in our minds, we allow sports to be different from casual and dont allow the same for esports"
I honestly don't mind Armada becoming a reaction channel
agreed on no buffer being better. it's like saying that playing guitar is too hard because you can't buffer your strums or something, just a really bizarre thing
i've always thought that complaints that melee is too hard to execute are just so arbitrary. nobody would ever say that IRL sports or musical instruments are too hard because you need to do things with precise timing and have to spend a lot of time picking up a lot of basic "tech skill"
There’s levels to it. Someone saying ‘I wish I could play that solo’ vs ‘sweep picking is impossible I can’t do it after a whole day.’ Everyone says shit like the first statement, it’s only human nature to want to emulate the best. Second statement is just whining
@@Relisoc yeah, totally agree. i think there just isn't enough of a culture for introducing people to melee for people to know what's attainable and how. guitars have been around long enough that people can tell what's too hard to learn in a day, what's too hard to learn in a year, and so forth, at least in expectation. video games have such a culture of instant gratification that casual players think they should just be able to "be sick" the second they start, not realizing that it's a sensitive and complex system, just as rewarding to get a flow-state control over as something like a musical instrument could be.
I know I'm over a year late, but I still want to give my opinion.
I'm actually involved in Ultimate's competitive scene. I'm serious enough to go to locals and watch tournaments, but not enough to aim at EVO or something like that.
I sometimes try playing Melee casually by myself or with my friends. We are all about the same skill level. And the lack of buffer is actually hurting my enjoyment of the game. I lack the fluidity in my movements and attacks I have in other games. But I don't take the game seriously enough to practice until I have the level to do that. I'm not aiming at doing top level 0 to dead Fox combos, I only want to play with fluidity.
Anyway, there's always other games I can play, I'm not obligated to play Melee, but I still wish I could enjoy it at my skill level.
Also, I envy wavedashing and shield dropping (but I think wavedashing should be less good if implemented in Ultimate). Also Ultimate has too much input buffer.
Makes me want to start a game studio with the goal of creating a new platform fighter that matches all of melee's mechanics, but has a dev team creating new content for it that understands what makes it amazing. Do you think that Melee players would consider a new game from a new IP if it had same if not better mechanics?
They already made one, it's called Rivals of Aether.
This is tremendous to see it from a Top player perspective
I like these styles of videos
In response to the " a lack of buffer is more like real life": I completely disagree. The inputs in melee would be like moving your arm but you cannot even think about what you're about to do with one of your fingers before your arm has reached the right spot you want it to be in to say grab something. Having a buffer is like being able to do multiple thing at once like raising your arm and opening your fist to grab a cup whereas not would be like raising your arm and THEN opening your first to grab a cup. 0 buffer just makes the game feel clunky to anyone who has played a newer game with uses a buffer system to make playing it feel more smooth. Now I hate how large the buffer system is in Ultimate and Smash 4 and I think it should probably be a quarter or half the size of what it is respectively.
I feel like you misunderstand when people say the game feels "clunky". It isn't just the cool stuff that is hard to do that contributes to that. Even something as simple as running and stopping exactly where you want to be is something that can give new players a lot of trouble because many of them don't know the proper techniques to make it simpler like crouching out of a run or wavedashing. Yeah everyone wants to do the cool stuff because it's cool but I feel like the reason people quit isn't because they can't immediately do the cool stuff, but instead it's because they can't do the simple stuff without putting in a lot of effort for a game they aren't even sure they will stick with.
I don't get the point about running and stopping exactly where you want to be. NO Smash game had this after Melee until Ult, and even then, run brake is still an action state that exists in every game, and Ult is the only one that lets you cancel it. If someone can't do something as simple as pressing down on the stick during a run, then maybe they shouldn't be trying to play Melee competitively at all.
First off your brain "buffers" movements so fast that it is comparable to being instant. Next to turn your argument around: Your brain in real life is the buffer that melee has. So yeah it is more realistic in that aspect. :P
Take a shot every time he says "to me..."
We'd have alcohol poisoning lmao
entry level is very important in video games. and i think most of the arguments for melee stem from it being a good competetive game. not necessarily a good game overall.
But it's an excellent game overall. I know many people who only play it casually and don't even know what a wave dash is who still consider it the best. I can't think of any reason why it wouldn't be a great game overall.
@@peliparado94 yeah but that's purely based in opinion.. that isn't looking at it objectively. you can love the game personally but you have to admit that it is definitely an excellent competitive game, but as a game you would hand to the average gamer it isn't THAT great of a game.
I actually think it's one of the best casual games. The items especially are more balanced in melee, imo. Items in Ultimate, like assist trophies and alot of the pokemon, are crazy powerful.
@@eagerinspirit And what objectivity are you using? Melee is the single greatest leap in content and depth in between entries (compare it to Smash 64), had a huge variety of modes and collectables, an astonishing set of movement options (even without exploits and mechanics), had an absurd ammount of content, was hailed as the best offline multiplayer game of its generation available on a Nintendo console and the average gamer seemed to like it quite well, given that it accounted for most Gamecubes sold in the console's lifespan.
Your "objectivity" is based on nothing and your "average gamer" is a meaningless fallacy. Melee is a very good casual game, especially for its time, and, of course, is easily the best competitive Smash game around
@@RDV333 It might just be the casual player base in my area but people who are new to smash have liked ultimate more than melee in my experience. I agree with @itsblackmail on this quite a bit. even though i don't play ultimate, i still put a challenge against my friends that own and love the game, but it doesn't work the other way around with me playing melee and practicing some of the harder things to learn (ps im trash). ultimate is just a better party game and casual players in my area enjoy ultimate over melee. but melee is still great game regardless. just not my fav game (or even in my top 5 games I love) and not my first to recommend to someone new to smash and not wanting a deep competitive experience. but melee and pm are leagues more fun to me compared to later smashes. newer smashes just dont compare to how good of a standard melee set mechanic wise.
you should check out the rest of his channel, best melee youtuber
I feel like Melee introduced some wonderful mechanics to the series and people take pride in grinding and grinding to “git good” at something but the difficulty to entry is a bit absurd for anyone looking to be even remotely ok competitively. One had to spend hours upon hours, days and months to practice basic movement to the point of doing it consistently, just for basic movements needed to be competitive. This isn’t even factoring in frame data and matchup knowledge. Players have to spend a ridiculous amount of time getting basic movements down which may seem like a brag but when you really thing about it, that much time dedicated to a video game is something reserved for young people with no responsibilities or the obsessed. Not saying games have to be super easy to learn and master, they should be rich in depth but melees entry barrier means you virtually have to resign yourself to mainly/only consuming melee for a ridiculous amount of time, which isn’t something I think is desirable for a lot of people, even competitive gamers.
For me the perfect game would be melee but with buffer, it would unite the fan base and allow other players to migrate easily without too much practice, if wavedashing is so essential I don't see why not simplify the command to give more freedom, so I could hold shield point my joystick and then press jump to immediately wavedash. Kinda like a replacement for normal dodge in Ultimate.
2:40 yeah,I guess
10:40 and are frustrated? Eeeugh maybe maybe not,can’t judge it like that either imo.
11:18 hm,well atleast the conscience on this good.
11:41 twitter yes
12:45 if trying to be optimal? I think so. Another thing is the result and such,even then the delays are,”frame perfect” but truly if you can it’s better.
14:31 yes that everything could be frame perfect yeah.
17:17 Iiiii don’t think that’s what,I think he meant this is idealization and conception of all this from 2016,not what he is thinking right now,which is why he is talking all this towards a conclusion. Just,I think watch the video first.
19:58 HE KEEPS TALKING BRO LET HIM!!! Ugh man it’s like it cuts at a certain quote he said that might look like it represents what he’s saying,BUT AGAIN,THIS IS ALL TOWARDS A CONCLUSION WITH MULTIPLE OF FACTORS!! Taking them like this one by one when this is about a full picture just doesn’t seem fair to nitpick.
23:01 see? There ya go
24:51 hm,probably. See how this feels more complete lol?
27:00 lol
28:56 uh huh
31:10 he does talk about that later too
32:12 see?
33:05 aaaaaaah see???!?!?!?! Lol
33:25 hm ok then
36:26 hmmm
36:55 w ok this again
29:40 HE JUST SAID THAT!! YOU’RE AGREEING WITH HIM
43:27 that is kind of hypocritical in my opinion considering your repeated disagreement towards wether a game should be played this way or the other,in my opinion.
45:13 see? What he said! Not saying anything about that? Hmm
47:10 …really? Bringing this argument now? Right here? For this? Come on
48:11 it is *Analyzing it as a game. Being objective* . Man it just feels like the objective is denying the video on my impression watching this taking these small parts and picking them with factors already mentioned and considered in their own right when it’s not what they are talking about in that instance. Hmmm
49:24 oh my goodness I’ve been playing Persona 5 recently. This…hits man😁
55:14 yeah honestly I personally hate platforms in Ultimate.
56:05 criiiitique of the game as a whooole. HM HM
1:04:02 it’s just not the same thing.
1:05:49 huh. Alright then
1:06:00 uh huh. Well,that’s good
1:11:14 true. True
1:12:39 what he said what he saaaaid
1:13:21 yup,that’s why melee is more balanced than those 2
1:16:17 probably
1:17:36 LMFAO
1:22:36 hm
1:22:50 welp. Take it