How To Get Casual Gamers Into Melee
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- Опубликовано: 18 сен 2024
- I told the internet (specifically on Twitter) to ask me anything about Melee. What I didn't predict is that @CONEYZZ would ask me the HARDEST HITTING QUESTION YET...
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edited by @c0rnflake ► / c0rnflake1
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#QnA #SmashBros #Coney #tophbbq
The thing that stopped me from picking up Melee for so long was how intense the inputs seemed. Not until recently did I actually try it and realize it's way easier than it looked! In fact, my issue with things like wavedashing was that I was doing it *too fast*. I believe the general audience misconceives the game being WAY harder to play than it actually is (even at a low level). I genuinely think if a tweet went viral with some crazy movement captioned "This player learned to do this in a month" it would get a lot of new people to try it out!
Toph is looking at things with so many Melee players around him that he doesn't see how Melee is an intimidating game. 'Hard Game' is such an intimdating thing get into. Melee people talking about how 'Insane' and 'Deep' the game is isn't going to create a welcoming image to the game, with the iamge of only the most cracked out gamers being able to play the game. Toph being an inside perspective I feel really hurts him here.
@@harpot678 What does "playing the game" mean to you? Because that's a topic that gets brought up all the time under this umbrella. If a newcomer gets matched against someone astronomically better than them, in any competitive game really, they don't get to play tbh. It doesn't even matter what kind of advanced mechanics exist at that point; the better player will just be better. But those same newcomers can absolutely "play the game" and have a goodass time as long as they have reasonably closely-skilled opponents, even if they suck at L-Cancelling and SD trying to wavedash.
@@TrueYankeeFan They aren't going to get to the point of playing the game if they get intimidated
Amazing idea :O
I so agree with this. There hasn't been a single smash 4 player who never told me that they're afriad to "break their hands" lmao x'D people need to chill and play Melee more that's all zw z
I feel like PM/P+ got a lot of the crowd who saw melee and thought "I like how high octane and fast this game is but I'm put off by the big learning curve for mechanics compared to other smash games/most games in general"
I literally downloaded P+ around 2 months ago after playing Melee for a little bit (both on a Wii) and it was SO MUCH more fun w/ Input Assist and Auto L Cancels. As an Ultimate kid, I don’t care much for the no buffer/L cancelling machamics and I wasn’t having much fun in Melee cause of it. In P+, I feel like I can actually do some cool stuff without grinding the game for 2 years.
@@caw64 while I can definitely sympathize with your sentiments, I think also part of the "problem" is that in the current gaming culture, people don't want to fucking grind anymore. people just see a game and immediately expect to just pick it up and start doing super cool shit, they don't understand the concept of starting from zero, practicing and improving, and slowly see yourself get better and better, and the satisfaction in that. it's like picking up basketball for the first time in your life. are you just gonna expect to be able to shoot well, dribble and handle well, understand positions, ball movement, and ball IQ? hell no, it takes practice, but the journey via practice is what is so amazing. but nowadays, people just want immediate gratification.
@@Chr1sT0fu Bro Elden Ring is one of the biggest releases of this year, a game that makes you grind to beat the bosses. Grinding is defo something a lot of people enjoy doing.
@@Chr1sT0fu I think a lot of it comes down to why people play video games. Most of the time, I play games to unwind or have fun. I don’t take much pleasure in spending hours and hours practicing melee tech when I could just play p+ or ult (or just a whole different game) and have more fun during those hours.
@@Chr1sT0fu while I largely agree with your sentiments I highly disagree with the specifics of auto l-cancels. And honestly the thing you're forgetting is that there's 800 million games out there, why should I play Melee or Dark Souls where there's people like you who just say "git gud" because there's arbitrary mechanics that don't actually add anything to the game after upper-low to low-mid levels of play. Even in grind-heavy games like Monster Hunter there's easier ways to play them like pretty much every low rank set from Freedom Unite to Rise is just as much attack as you can fit and then maybe guard or evasion +1 if you get a good talisman or something. If you expect the opponent to L-cancel 99.9% of the time then you aren't ready to capitalize on a missed one and don't try to tell me the extra 3-5 frames of endlag is reactable especially in Melee where there's no visual indication. I've played these games for over 15 years, L-cancelling is not the hill to die on
I’m a minecraft dev, who has been a melee player for a while(still casual) a global player in CSGO, high elo in LoL etc. I would still consider myself quite hardcore but when you actually check the numbers like in Minecraft you realise most people have never been to the nether something I found super interesting. Seeing Mango Axe play casually with items and laughing made me really happy, and then sad when no one I knew would want to do it because it’s too casual. Having (imo) seen both the casual and hardcore players I do think there is value in appealing to the casual audience WITHOUT necessarily making it 200% accessible. You can make a game where you can grind but many fighting games rely on a solo practice culture. In League of Legends and even CSGO(atleast until a certain level) you commonly practice IN GAME and not solo for hours. That I think is a huge part for casual players they just want to play the game.
Can u bring back 1.8 combat pls
@@mlalbaitero lmaooo
The first question that Coney asked, I’ve had a very similar thought about how I used to try and introduce Melee to my friends.
I think perhaps i may have overloaded them a bit with info just because I was so stoked on how complex the game was, I feel like maybe they would still be interested in Melee if I just didn’t try and tailor the way that they interpreted the game.
Yeah I've felt a similar way with CN Punch Time Explosion and I've been slowly teaching little tricks (and lower my playing level to theirs for an even match) when introducing the game on Parsec.
Though if they've played another Smash game, it may not have changed much since they'd be more used to "up to date" mechanics.
Number of players matters as well. Free for alls are the most fun for new players typically, and after a while if they know you're like 10x better and not trying, it can be it's own fun to have them team up 3v1 style. Introduction to the game is huge. If they end up having fun day one, they're very likely to come back and maybe even try to get better. Also, if you load up information there isn't a drive to come back? I'm not sure how to word this properly but I hope you understand what I mean here. It's like a message saying "yeah this game is pretty cool there's all this nest stuff in it" like some tourist guide, something temporary.
Bro Toph doesn't understand what an insanely intimidating image Melee has gotten because its 'insanely deep' 'impossibly technical'. He says that image isn't harming anything, and he is wrong.
@@harpot678 I still think it all comes down to your first exposure to the game and you may be right but only to some degree. When the most common subject being talked about in Melee is how much of a God certain players are and you overload others with crazy techs and "ooooo mind games" and that's their first exposure then it feeds a certain expectation about the game but on the other hand, I believe it's not a driving turn off if said players haven't touched the game yet. If a new player comes on and constantly gets his ass handed by.... Mang0 or somebody at that level any fun had if at all will only last a few days at most. If that player comes on and just... plays it. No outside factor is going to effect that. Said player can play with someone on the same skill level as well, and that is why despite my inability to defeat a level 9 cpu Ganondorf consistently I still play Melee from time to time.
I can speak on this as someone who played Slap City and couldn't find anyone but FumbLyn (top player) to play with. It was fun for a while and watching how cool (or funny since I'm bad and lose to inviable strategies) she played, but then after a while it was like why am I even playing now. Though I believe knowing that the game was fading with only the dedicated players playing played a bigger part in that.
@@amaterachu1 Damn you knew FumbLyn? Best NASB player in the world?
@@harpot678 nah, he acknowledged it
I saw that "which esport would you save" poll and it was interesting to see that some people interpreted it as having "smash" as an option while others specifically recognized that melee was the one listed
I think the conclusion of this video is the most important point, which is that Melee's depth and its fun are interlinked. Like, it can be fun at a casual level in the same way as later smash games, but if that's all you want, a lot of the later games can give you that better. I think a lot of people don't realize that you don't need to get good enough at the tech to compete to start having fun with it, and that mastering the freeform and expressive movement of Melee is an inherently enjoyable activity. Wavedashing is deep, and important to the competitive scene, but it's also fun as fuck, and the later smash games feel worse without it.
Going to a tournament with your friends is definitely the best and quickest way to dive into the melee community. My first ever major was TBH 9 and holy shit was that an insane tournament and looking back to it now, I couldn’t have had a better first time experience.
As an avid melee player, but someone who isn't part of the community, I believe I have a relatively unique perspective on the question, and specifically the conclusion Toph comes to in this video:
The community needs to emphasize how fun the game is now more than ever.
I was recently speaking to a friend who I had previously tried, and failed, to get into Melee (He likes smash, and he likes competitive games so I assumed he fit all the criteria for a melee player). He recently took a long break from his main competitive game, Rocket League, and we were talking about why we play hard games in the first place. Everything he was saying aligned with my Melee experience so I was somewhat confused as to why why he didn't take to it. I have a theory that it boils down to two main things:
1)Barrier to entry: Melee is a nightmare to get into. The lack of buffer (which cannot be overstated as a barrier to entry), as well as the seemingly infinite chasm in skill between a complete newcomer and the average Slippi player, combines to create a feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness in a new player. It doesn't matter how many times they're told "You can do it" or "It'll come with practice", there is no reason to continue playing a game that only makes you feel bad about yourself.
2) Melee content today: I distinctly remember getting into competitive smash because I watched M2K and Otori Metaknight ditto during top 8 of Apex 2013. Gameplay wise I understood nothing, but I still became invested because the crowd exploded every time something happened. I was basically conditioned, through pure hype, to love smash. This is the same thing that Toph was talking about when he said the people on the Melee setup were having so much fun. The bottom line is that Melee players play Melee because they love losing their collective shit when something cool happens, this sense of belonging and shared value is what allows newcomers to become invested. Melee content today has almost none of that (by comparison), obviously there are no crowds, but even seeing people freak out or laugh while playing with a friend seems to be a lot rarer now in the realm of content. It might seem nebulous or silly, but I really believe that Melee gets it's value from being a "Hype Machine", and if people don't see that they won't have a reason to play.
I don't know how much can be done about the skill curve, but a lack of "hype" content is something that comes from the community, which means that it's within the community's power to change.
TL;DR: Content isn't hype right now. The game is really hard and won't reward you for a long time.
I watched your earlier ep and I'm literally in the same boat as Sosa, I love PM Wario and Melee Jigglypuff just feels like shitty defensive Wario, I know that's not how it actually is but it FEELS like an enormous downgrade
That's sorta why I brought up my question here--for me personally, I get less satisfaction out of executing a waveshine usmash I've practiced 500x before than I do catching a second jump with Puff bair. Part of me wonders if the Church of Fox has forced people to look at Melee through a specific lens when there's so much to love about it besides
Def fully hear you on what gets people into the game though, a tight Falcon clip that goes viral will definitely be more interesting and bring people in from outside the game than any Peach extended edgeguard
Amen.
Yeah definitely, and with the recent resurgence of for example Peach at a top level I hope Melee fans realize there's a lot to the game that they might not already be appreciating.
THANKS FOR THE SICK QUESTION CONEY
i think the problem isn’t that we’re focusing on the difficulty. it’s that it feels like lying to tell someone “this game is so much fun” and then have people play it and realize how much effort you need to put in to get to the fun point
I originally tried to play melee when the doc came out. But I have really bad anxiety and large crowds can give me panic attacks. Going out to NYC locals was always difficult for me, and my college FGC club hated melee, so I never really kept playing. It was too discouraging. Now with slippi and uncle punch I feel like I've improved more in 2 months than I did when i played for a year back in college. Practice is so much easier, and playing online to get people practice is so useful.
Moving to a new city also has made it easier to try locals again. The tournies are a lot smaller than NYC and feels easier to interact with others.
I've been having so much more fun playing now than I did when the doc came out. Even at my low skill level its easier to find others my level. And also, even at my low skill level, matches feel deep, and the mechanics feel smooth. Even tho I dont have the techskill to physically do what I want yet, Im still new, I know its possible. I know what I want to do in the game is possible because of how many people play the game and produce content for it.
I think that with the all these new tools, seeing how deep and impressive melee and striving to reach for that is more accessible than its ever been, and that will always draw new players.
I remember a lot of games at 2010 we're moving towards casual play. Many games were just "push "x" button" to progress the story. They were Essentially visual novels. Then come darksouls, the anti to those games, the counter culture. And Ds1 showed that people still like games that have adversity. That's what I feel melee gives, a sense of adversity.
I think you're right it's most important for someone to have access to someone they know and/or like who'll explain the game and break it down in a digestible form. Sometimes it has to be tailored to a particular audience or individual, which is why it's always been difficult to teach fighting games.
I've seen so many people who have flocked back to Fortnite because of the Zero Building mode who say they now can actually engage with the game now that it's not just people building the empire state building in a second. But they don't even understand what the tactical implications of each build are, they are just overwhelmed by the volume and speed at which they are happening.
I think Melee, other FGs and high skill ceiling games in general have this issue where people focus more on APM rather than sort of chunking the moves together into coherent tactics that make sense strategically that people can understand.
Chess became a lot more interesting to me when I watch and think about piece development and center control instead of trying to understand each individual move and assumed it was all about calculations and study, the fundamentals make the game make sense.
These videos drop right at the start of my workday. Sitting here fiending for melee for the next 9 and a half hours
What’s interesting about the “melee is hard” discourse is despite how hard it is, I’ve never really even considered the difficulty when I’m playing, even if I’m practicing challenging tech skill. The game is so much fun that I could solo practice movement for hours and not get bored. When difficulty puts people off of melee I have trouble understanding, Ive always played melee because it’s the most fun I’ve ever had in a video game, the difficulty makes improvement slow but it doesn’t really make the game any less fun. It’s always a great time, even when you’re terrible. It definitely helps to have actually friends/practice partners tho, getting stuck in the slippi unranked gauntlet ruins a lot of what makes the game fun I imagine
Well said. As I was watching this video I was trying to think back to why I was getting into Melee in the first place and it was hard for me to put a finger on a concrete reason. I think this is because I was basically just having a ton of fun playing the game, there was no explicit reason necessary for me to keep grinding. I didn't need to keep it in the back of my mind that I'm learning an incredibly deep and intricate game or that Melee players get a lot of respect for mastering such a difficult game. I just played because the game is so damn fun.
Nobody knows anything about how fun the game is until they try, and they won't try because they have this image of Melee that its impossibly hard and technical.
@@harpot678 I would argue that people have the same image of Dota but it is still one of the most popular and lucrative esports and many new players try Dota all the time.
Maybe i can offer some perspective on it, me and a friend of mine tried melee some time a bit more than a year ago on slippi. We both play ultimate and some other FGs, so it's not like we never touched a controller before.
We both agreed that, after an hour, the game just felt clunky and unreliable because there's no buffer, and if you have zero movement tech the game also just feels pretty slow. Neither of us saw an actual reason to go and practice L cancelling or wave dashes, or to play with no buffer until it stops feeling terrible, when we could just go back to (for example) Rivals of Aether and engage with the fast-paced, fun gameplay immediately, and then look for tech or more depth if we really want to.
From our perspective, it was just... not worth getting into melee? Like, neither of us play games specifically because we want to get good at them - it's something that just comes naturally if we're having a good time with it. And we just weren't having a good time in melee.
@@arcanopulse966 yeah that’s true. Honestly coming from ult or rivals it will feel that way, it might actually be a little more difficult of a transition from them rather than from scratch because as you said, the game does feel super clunky when you’re first starting out, but if you’re a total noob to platform fighters you might not notice as much since there isn’t as much to compare it to. But the more you play melee the smoother it feels and eventually ult becomes the clunky one.
if you see some fire melee game play and aren't immediately hooked then you're just not going to get it.
That's just the sort of dumb shit I was looking for.
I watch for the Hbox camping experience. That's it. That's all I want in my melee.
@@Reapehify Not me, man. Im looking for that 3 am degen set up of two randoms from different regions just going nuts on each other rotating characters with crazy SD kills all over the place.
@@wesleymcbob float, bair, bair, move laterally, bair, float, float, float, bair, float, ledge grab, float out, bair, float in, forward grab, fair, fair, fair, fair
Nothing better.
My whole motivation to improve in Melee back in the day was getting completely washed on a friendlies setup at one of my first tourneys. That made me really want to get to the point where I can run a friendlies setup and do sick shit or appreciate sick shit happening on me to bond with people over.
Once I got to that point combined with online growing and growing (and pandemic coming in), it's just so hard to care about improvement or playing as much because of how much the IRL adds to it. I completely agree, the online era for Melee and honestly Smash in general is just not the same. Melee is S tier fun IRL and like B tier fun online, but I can imagine for new players unless you're on the new player discord it's like a C or D tier experience online.
On Coney's podcast with Alpharad, they said how Alpharad was like the first smash content creator, but he did content for sm4sh and melee has never really had "an Alpharad" even though it could. I think content creation is HOW you show off the fun side of melee. In fact i think GG has been making big moves. They did mention though that the big trend right now is narrative content and that's something that melee is missing. All it takes is some mid level player making a story about how "I challenged THIS Melee pro... it didn't go well"
Yeah basically i think that melee needs some more content. Not necessarily from the pros since they have pro things to do but need just some random mid level player who isn't afraid to show off their personality.
I even got into melee thanks to a series by alpharad with his friend Jo, telling top 100 player Scythed to be a troll on Anthers Ladder. Their reactions showed what's fun and cool or funny. They styled, disrespected, trolled, and they explained some of the more niche aspects of melee too even how the grass on FoD can do some weird momentum stuff.
really? could you say which episode it is to hear the whole convo
@@skellez Literally the smash episode
That's how I got into it too! I didn't even know that netplay existed before I saw Scythed win off an SD, say that it didn't count because of an SD, convince the other player they won, then losing by SDing so he could say that he needed that win in return and he's crying because he told his mom that he would win. Fun stuff.
I can almost guarantee that the reason the most played character on net play is falco is because mango has been giving people nerd chills for 10 years.
I picked melee up because it was "Goinmul".
Kind of brave to pick up a game specifically because it was rotting watter
@@harpot678 yea bro. gimme that delicious 2001 game with decades of tech development. Jumpin in head first my guy
The message of this video is great! New players often assume months of training are necessary to enjoy the game, but the adrenaline rush of messy, last-stock melee is *always* fun, even if you can't shorthop or wavedash yet.
I mean, how the game actually is isn't really relevant if you can't change the image of the game. Even if those assumptions aren't true, they're still there and prevent newcomers from trying the game out.
Can confirm that seeing someone do dope shit in person is way more impressive. It just feels way more real. I remember I had been watching Melee for 3 years and had seen tons of videos of Leffen, Mang0, KJH and other top Foxes, but the biggest nerd chills I ever got was watching JoyBoy in person at a tourney. And he's amazing obviously, but not quite at the same level as those other guys. But seeing it in person was magic
I think Zain is pretty inspiring in this conversation. Most people think it’s so old that it’s all figured out and you’re just going to be “playing catch up” but never able to surpass the veterans.
It’s important to play people around, below, and above your skill level. If you do too much of one then you’ll probably get frustrated or bored. Unranked is a good example of that.
basically the high skill ceiling was confused with a high skill floor in the discourse for various reasons, but the truth that very few people appreciate is that melee has both a low skill floor and high skill ceiling in a way that very few games are able to manage. Melee is a game that designers should be learning from that way.
The Hard, Impressive and deep part of Melee is the whole reason we are still a strong community, with tournaments, our own netplay and great content like this.
Brawl is fun and easier to learn but it died before smash 4 even came out. Smash ultimate seems more balanced I guess but the reason melee competitive has coexisted with every new smash game is because it's deep, hard and impressive, which also makes it more rewarding, more exciting and more fun than it would be if it wasn't.
I'm here 2 years late to say that I downloaded slippi and am playing melee for the first time (since i was 7 playing on my GC) in a competetive fashion BECAUSE of the immense amount of depth. been a part of other FGC's for several years (primarily SF and DBFZ) but after hearing/learning the complexities of melee it has sent me full dive. I love the feeling in other fgc's with pulling the crazy 70+ percent combos, insane paries/mixups, ect.... but the complexities that are even just efficiently moving your character around stage, and the neutral/disadvantage states has sent me reeling and learning as much smash content as possible. In 2-3 months I've gone from "another casual fighting game fan" to making friends and truly being a part of a community..... and without melee I would've never looked over this way.
I kinda think it's more that it's a matter of being a part of a community, than specifically it being irl. Doing cool stuff in melee requires some amount of practice and grind, and most people aren't going to feel motivated to put the time into that - there are other games that are easier to get a feeling of accomplishment. BUT, if you're in a community of people who are doing the same thing, there is more incentive to put the work in, because now you have people to get advice from, or get solidarity from, or show off to. It feels similar to the speedrunning community - obviously there are a lot of people who are just spectating, but those communities also have a lot of TASers and strat hunters and runners that are all engaging with the difficulty in a community way. That makes me think that the solution isn't just about getting people to come to irl tournaments, but also it's about building online spaces that can get newcomers hooked on that sense of community, and give them positive feedback while they're in the early stages of learning the game.
Idk. I think Melee's difficulty is a selling point for some people, but I've definitely found myself looking at Melee and saying "if I'm not interested in playing in tournaments and mastering these difficult techniques, then what's even the point of Melee?" It's honestly why I don't play. I'm just not at a stage in my life where I want to spend my free time mastering some old video game like that.
@Gundice No one wants to get into Melee to play Event Matches and Adventure mode lmao. If you aren't in it for the multiplayer, Melee has very little to offer.
I got into melee around 2013, maybe 2012, me and some friends used to play Brawl very casually after college, one of them said we should play melee because its faster and more fun (really he only never played brawl before) so we started playing melee casually even when I said something like "yeah but melee is hard and we are not even good we wont get to play like the pros", after some weeks playing like casuals I started liking it, so I got my own copy and played it at home with my brother almost daily, still no competitive level but now I could beat my friends in it, my friends in their own way got better too, then that's when I started the grind. Inspired by mang0 and other top level players me and my brother started training tech skill with the space animals, at first it's hard to actually put it in practice, but having someone to 1v1 constantly really helps. I first picked up Falco but then switched to Fox after a year or so. After all this years now my friends wont even play against me, that's ok tho cause we just do other shit, and I've get to know a lot of other people through melee, friends, that I regularly play with. Also my brother still plays and can beat me even when he doesn't play as much as me these days (doesn't have Netplay or a CRT).
My point is, even when the hard part of melee almost kept me away from playing it, it was also the rewarding part that comes with it that made me stay and look for people better than me so that they can beat my ass until they no longer did.
I rlly think that a melee "PogChamps" style tournament would help us a lot.
A single bracket where is only streamer vs streamer
and a doubles bracket a coach and a streamer vs a coach and a streamer
it would be hype af for both the normie watcher and for us too
I was thinking about this the other day bc of elden ring, like it really does just coat the game in a veil that makes people want to stay away imo. I wish the consensus was how cool and interactive it was instead of how difficult it was, especially bc most of the time it seems the fun and overall enjoyment of playing melee usually masks the difficulty, at least once you get basic stuff down like l canceling and movement
It's that old school purity that's so well preserved. Like that older brother shit and you're just like :O
The depth of Melee and the storylines of the best players in the game as a result is the reason why it's still got a big scene 20 years after it came out. From the outside looking in(read: people not looking for a technical game) if people just wanted to play a game because it looked "fun" it'd be hard to convince them that Melee is more fun than Ultimate.
I've seen Melee randomly come up numerous times across different gaming podcasts(where they otherwise have no reason to be brought up) and it's always about the difficulty of the game and the legacies that the best players leave. That doesn't happen merely as a result of the game being "fun"
The first time I saw proper competitive Melee, was Evo 2013. I saw Mango and Ice play and thought, "I want to learn how to do that!" So I did. I'm not at their level (obviously) but I could do the cool stuff. Granted I was already learning other fighting games, like MVC, so it wasn't as hard for me as it might've been for someone else.
One of my friends loves Ultimate, but doesn't have a Switch. I gave him the Melee ISO, set up Slippi, and gave him a controller. But he won't even entertain the idea of trying Melee because in his words, "I don't want to play a game where I basically have to study an encyclopedia to even begin to know what to do."
Ultimate is where you need to study an encyclopedia of matchups lol too much characters. Melee is just grindier in the execution
I think the process of a game kicking your butt until you learn can be done in a fun way, and maybe it's just that it's a reaaaally hard thing to execute. When I think about practicing Melee tech that isn't strictly movement based I don't think fun, but wavedashing on the other hand is one of the coolest things that exist in smash. It strikes a good balance between being satisfying and being difficult to pull off.
I think it would be fun to see top players getting together for some good old fashioned all items on, random stage, 4 player free for all. Maybe even a charity tournament with those rules.
I've definitely always been drawn to hard games not because they're hard but because I'm very impressed with what people can do in the game. All my favorite games I probably started playing because I saw one crazy clip and thought "damn that looks sick wonder if I can do that".
Yo on that last point, how sick would a LOL vs Dota2 slippi crew battle be!!
When I was in college 2012-16, melee was a top 5 casual game at parties and pregames along with Double Dash. Every guy dorm had a copy. The problem is that our smash club was super insular and unwelcoming and playing the game competitively is genuinely difficult and not rewarding for a long time.
Yeah I would say not focusing enough on the fun aspect has been harmful, but having the hard aspect has not been harmful, in fact I think it has helped the community. Anytime something is considered the best in class of some attribute, it will always draw a wider and more passionate audience than if something was very good at a bunch of things
I think another thing that stops people from playing is jabronis who do play always talking about grinding tech skill and how hard the game is. In reality to play casually you dont need this but everyone says that you do. In addition I have a few friends that keep saying "I want to be good at melee, I just cant" because they play once and are just too used to ult to get over the lack of buffering and they give up prematurely.
a LOT of the league pros esp the older ones
well in north america atleast, fucking love SSBM like LS used to play competitively dudes a esports legend at this point for starcraft/league
Lately I've been playing alot of slippi and some ultimate, I notice myself getting better at melee little by little, but ultimate I feel like I've hit a ceiling
The way I see it is, if you're someone who isn't interested in learning the fundamental tech (Wavedashing, L-Canceling, etc.) that is absolutely fine. Not every game has to be for everyone. BUT, the existence of these things is NOT a flaw with the game, not even close. It's the people who can't cope with the fact that playing Melee isn't for them so they sling shit about the game that bother me. Or those who bitch about how Melee sucks because they can't disable tap jump or whatever.
The flaw is the framing of Melee that the community puts out.
Toph vs Ken is actually a sick set from Toph is you have never seen it lol
if there was a death of melee, the reluctance to hold irl tournaments due to covid is what would cause it due to lack of exposure to the game
I think that competetive gaming is seperate from casual in that the audience is different. I think that melee wouldn't still be played to day if it wasn't competitive. brawl was a ton of fun, but people didnt stick with it because "fun" just doesn't last.
Surprised you didn't mention that Melee being "hard" gets in the way of people getting into it now way more than in the past is because Ultimate exists and is in the spotlight. When I got into competitive smash, I had only played Brawl before, so the moment I saw melee I instantly knew it was a way more interesting game. But now when people have played ultimate casually and they see melee for the first time, there's no reason for them to care about melee because ultimate can be as hype and has a similarly vibrant competitive scene without the downside of being extremely technical.
I really like the analogy to Souls games. I fell like a lot more people would enjoy the souls series if people focused more on how REWARDING the game is as opposed to just how hard it is.
I used to be worried that the lack of netplay was going to kill Melee. Now I'm almost worried that Melee's going to die because netplay is too good and people don't build the same connections if they don't play local.
melee players are so focused on the competitive scene of melee, that they forget it's literally just a smash bros game that's fun for noobs to play casually, without learning anything. we should be encouraging random people to get on slippi with their friends and use PS4 controllers to play melee and have fun on their own without even knowing about the competitive scene, not tell them where to buy a GCC adapter because you can only use GCC's in tourney and shit every time someone wants to try it out.
its dumb that casual melee players get scared off no one is forcing you to play competitively play with items on and press random buttons at friends literally the game is is still a party game but its also accidently a great competitive game. So play and have fun with 4 player item matches with friends or go to tournaments and win evo it doesnt matter how you play. That's what makes melee great and what makes games like halo 3 great it's a party game with fun modes but also has a great competitive structure
I wouldn't say the "hardest game ever" discourse is particularly off putting.
Playing the game and realising how much consistent effort you have to put in is off putting.
I put a month into melee, took a couple weeks off, and the game felt horrible because I haven't built up years of muscle memory, and I'd taken a break.
Playing the game does have niche appeal for people who do like super hard games and practicing.
That just is what it is, unless nintendo release an easier version which may isolate the previously enfranchised players (and definitely won't happen anyway)
It is what it is, and for me, I'll continue watching.
They have, and Melee is relatively isolated.
I feel like this question is behind Sakurai/Nintendo's disavowal of the competitive scene. Feels like they think the attitude hurts the community. IDK
Good speech
Big $ Toph
The only reason I ever became interested in melee was bc of its reputation for being really hard
Melees systems are so interesting and cool but the movement is so fucking hard. Ive put so many hours practicing the basic movement stuff and other basic techniques. When I play a match, I still cant wavedash and miss most of my l cancels. I also get stuck in my movement 90% of the match. I can understand labbing fighting games and what not but I cant justify playing melee as a beginner where youre playing against the games difficult movement rather than your actual opponent for so many hours. Anytime I play against real people I feel like my time is wasted because of how much difficulty I have moving so I should just practice that BUT i do not want to spend a majority of my time playing a fighting game, playing it alone practicing movement
I don't give a damn. It's difficult, deer, and fun, I have this game so much but I love trying to get better at it. I still sick and I don't care I will continie to torture myself with this game
I see coney and I click
The "Hardest Game EVER Mystique" was always a very egotistical framing. Every game is as deep as you make it. Look at ZFG finding hidden depths within Ocarina of Time. And if you don't like that argument. You really think melee is technically faster or harder than games like StarCraft or CounterStrike? Also melee doesn't even have some incredibly challenging elements like the social awareness needed in team games like League of Legends. The problem is the framing by the community not the elements themselves.
I was a little miffed when Toph mentioned how Melee has street cred for being deep and hard, IT DOESN'T MATTER HOW MUCH STREET CRED YOU GET IF YOU END UP ALIENATING POTENTIAL NEW PLAYERS, unless you WANT a circlejerk of doc kids. Atrioc and Toph discussed how important the top of the funnel is, and ensuring that the top of the funnel is as wide as possible to maintain growth or to survive, yet still cling onto the framing of the game. In an episode of Radio Melee, while PPMD tried to explain that Melee isn't about how hard it is, how deep it is, but a reflection of yourself, seeing yourself grow and have fun along the process, Toph explained how Melee will 'always attract those hardcore gamers, those people are the audience for Melee'.
@@harpot678 I think the "Melee is a reflection of yourself" thing, while 100% true, Is also true of every Esport. True of any activity you pour yourself into and try to improve at. Melee players have a somewhat unique understanding of this for a lot of reasons. The two most important of which I think are how old the game (and therefore the player base) is, and how intense the game is.
There's just something about fighting games that makes community so freaking hard. It's not like Esports in general is good at community, its toxicity all around for the most part, but fighting games are particularly bad at it. Something about sitting next to the person you are playing and playing the same people over and over just makes it extra hard. Slippy is helping, and pro players getting older and wiser has helped a lot too but the hole has been dug pretty deep at this point.
I personally find it hard to repair old relationships whose foundations were created in toxic melee in my younger days. Makes the game hard to play for me.
@@peacefulwarrior9518 so true peaceful warrior 👑
Dark souls being hard is not the appeal of dark souls.
Its what a subgroup of people with weak ego's want to think, because the games are intentionally not that hard
THANK YOU. I’ve finished every fromsoft game since ds1 at least once and people drastically exaggerate how hard they are. Just about every single NES game I’ve ever played is harder. Fighting games innately have an infinite difficulty curve. Precision platformers, CRPGs, rhythm games, RTS games, etc. can all be a lot harder.
A 30 hour play through with some bosses that will maybe take 5-10 attempts does not make souls games *so difficult bro gotta git gud* . The games are very well made, but they aren’t _super_ hard, the difficulty is pretty balanced. Steam completion rates are a lot higher than some of the more niche “hardcore” genres like bullet hells.