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I'm pointing at the emu of elf excretion.
IMPORTANT
Any reply to this thread that is not directly related to the opinions I am presenting (IE, "I think it's fine", "that's your opinion", If you don't like it don't play it") will not be responded to. The point of a forum is to discuss topics, not to derail them and create nonsense arguments that are both flame inducing, and irrelevant. Either address my points directly, or do not respond. If you do, expect your responses to be ignored.
This topic is about the discussion of how the fall of competitive play in both Super Smash Brothers Brawl and Halo Reach are directly related to the inclusion of random elements.
First off, before anyone pulls out the old, "SSB isn't competitive with items on". While this is not necessarily true. It removes elements of randomness that otherwise hindered it from being a truly deep game. This is a reason that the MLG playlist often varies from the default games of the series for Halo. There are plenty of games that require modification from their default form to make the competitive. While SSB is one of the only fighting games to have this, it is because it was a beautiful mistake.
Before anyone argues that Melee wasn't supposed to be competitive, my argument is: neither was Street Fighter 2. But because of all the advanced techniques in the game, and the fact that the company decided to embrace it rather then getting rid of it in later installments, the Street Figher series birthed most of the competitive fighters of today. So in my opinion, while there is still debate as to whether L canceling / Wavedashing are glitches, and there is some degree of proof in both categories, I believe that since these "glitches" are not gamebreaking, and instead provide depth, that they should be embraced and not have that depth undermined. The same could be said of Halo 2. If in either of these games you strived to get better, these techniques were available to be learned through online tutorials. In both cases, the depth is there.
So in that respect, any argument about whether or not the games depth is legitimate is not what I wish to discuss. The depth is there, and if some misguided sense of pride prevents people from utilizing it that is their problem.
Onto the discussion.
When you compare Super Smash Brothers Melee to Super Smash Brothers Brawl, from a features standpoint, Brawl is far superior. More characters, More stages, More items, being able to decide which songs play on which stages, etc. It is hard to argue that Melee is in any way superior, save perhaps sound effects but that boils down to opinion and is a moot point. The graphics in brawl are better, the stages look better. In those ways, Brawl is superior.
The unfortunate thing about Brawl is what was changed with the core mechanics of the gameplay. When you bring both games to their peek competitive level, what Brawl suffers from is a lack of options. The characters are a lot more "floaty" in brawl, meaning doing anything in the air is a much higher risk, and this is combined with the fact that L-canceling no longer exists so aerials are a bigger risk. Lack of wavedashing makes movement more restrictive. Dashdancing was removed. Tripping was add just to add an element of random to the game. Lack of hitstun and hitlag, combined with a reusable airdodge makes combos near impossible if you aren't Metaknight. At top level play, camping away is how the game is played, because there is very little reward for being agressive. This is also the main reason that instead of 4 stock like in Melee, 3 stock is now the standard.
Melee gameplay has an incredible variety of options that stem from advanced techniques. It rewards agressive gameplay with good spacing, and having your L canceling down is extremely important and adds to the skill gap. Put simply, there is more going on, and everything going on with your character is under your control.
So now, moving on to Reach. Just like Brawl, it has more features, better graphics, etc. etc. But lets talk about what counts. The gameplay.
Although I personally feel that the AA's are unbalanced within themselves, this is not something I wish to debate. So to make it more relate-able to Brawl, for this example I am going to view them in the same way I have items, and assume that they are removed from the game at the most competitive level.
Now what is interesting about Reach when you take it and strip it down to it's highest level of gameplay, the game is so much less about who can shoot better then other Halo games. It is almost always pointless to confront someone to have a head to head DMR. Now, for me personally, it is for the fact that 1) If I lose the skirmish, it is frustrating and often due to the other person spamming. 2) At close range, when both players are spamming, this is basically a coin toss. In both cases, I don't feel that either kill is satisfying.
This is why kill times are so huge when grenades are not involved. Because if I am being shot at, instead of turning to face my opponent and attempting to outplay them, I can not rely on my skill to aim, and instead must rely on spamming. It is often better to run then to confront, and since even MLG (what I consider to be the most competitive playlist) has sprint, running away is pretty easy.
Now, some people don't consider this a bad thing, as it increases the amount of teamwork necessary to compete, reducing the amount of bloom reset that would otherwise have been helpful (at some ranges). I somewhat agree with this. But I also feel that in the other Halo's, this option wasn't necessary for teams that wanted to go out on there own, and that what this does is discourages people from searching outside of teams out of fear of being matched up with a full team. What I'm saying is, the ability to Lone Wolf was greatly reduced. I find this as a negative aspect and if you think it is positive you are welcome to your opinion.
Movement speed is another hindrance, making strafing virtually useless, grenades very hard to avoid, map movement is slowed down, etc etc. There are custom options to fix this, but it is a big problem in default Reach making grenade spamming to useful.
Another important aspect of Reach is the maps. Without going at to much length about it, I feel that the Halo maps have been going downhill since (imo the best maps of the series) Halo 2. And Reaches maps are either symmetrical maps with dynamic spawns, or Asymmetrical maps that strongly encourage camping and/or give one team a major advantage. MLG corrects a lot of them and it is why I play that playlist most.
I was going to go into length about how the other Halo games are superior in a lot of aspects to Reach, but I am running out of characters and feel like I listed most of what has changed since the other Halo's and you can get a grasp of what I'm saying if you've played them. The stuff I wrote about Melee was for the benefit of those who are unaware of the competitive aspect of it.
The difference between Reach and Brawl is that Reach can be helped along with a lot of the custom settings, while Brawl really cannot. It is a shame because I have been competitive with Melee since 2005 and haven't been able to play because of how shallow at is. At least in Reach's MLG playlist everything flows better then in default Reach.
There is something called Project M, which is a mod of Brawl which is designed to bring it back to be basically identical to Melee, but taking the things Brawl did right and implementing them, while also balancing out the characters based on data from top players of the game. A demo is available now, and the finished product is sure to be awesome.
TL;DR
In conclusion, I think both Reach and Brawl ultimately failed at being sequels. I think it shows a sort of mainstreaming of these games, and how many of them are designed to be easy to master for this generation that is focused on instant gratification.
If you would like to take my points and discuss them, I would be glad too.