Rivals 2 isn't for Rivals 1 players

[ciswhiteheterosexualmalenumber2]

I'm mostly opening up this discussion to see what other people have to say, whether it be for or against my take. Either way, I would like for this to be positive and polite.

My small little take is that rivals 2 is so fundamentally separated from the gameplay of rivals 1 that it feels like a kick to the balls to fans of the first. The game just plays so much slower and so much more defensive and it kinda sucks. Etalus sorta drove this point home for me, a once fun character who had insane offensive and reading capabilities who was balanced by his size just feels terrible to play. He's just bad now and that sucks.

It really feels like so much of rivals's character and moveset design was built with the speed and fluidity in mind, and they weren't thinking about shields. It worked fine for rivals 1 because of its limited defensive tools, but them just slapping the same movesets into a completely different game warrants a completely different experience, and it isn't a very good one.

When this game got announced it was so vindicating, I was really really excited because I was looking for and expecting innovation on the prequel I loved so much, not a slow, watered down experience designed for smash players.

TLDR; Rivals 1 is not melee, even if it was trying to be at the time. Rivals 1 was instead its own unique experience that many people fell in love with. Rivals 2 on the other hand is just melee, and the designs that were specifically built with rivals 1's gameplay in mind have been ruined. Its really unfortunate for people who were fans of the first game and wanted to see innovation on something they already enjoyed.

[Azelinuu]

Nguyên văn bởi MetoolMan:

64 > Melee was a clear evolution.
Melee > Brawl was a step back in competitive play, and Melee players stay with Melee.
Brawl > Sm4sh was a clear improvement, plus a portable version.
Sm4sh > Ultimate was another improvement.

RoA I > RoA II was a regression in it's uniqueness and playstyle. The game is now aiming for Melee players, who always prefer Melee. Sure, RoA I was SIMILAR to Melee, in it's embrace of tech, but it was trying to be it's own thing.

So yeah, the argument is new because the situation is new. This game is a bad sequel.

so 64 to Melee was evolution
you didn't say if Melee to Brawl was evolution or an improvement, just that it was a step back in comp, even then you said Melee players stuck with Melee and that's something you can boil down to someone's preferences and not what the game was supposed to accomplish
you said Brawl all the way to Ult were improvements and not evolutions, but none of those games played like the previous ones at all, so what determines something being an improvement, an evolution, or something someone preferred?

[ciswhiteheterosexualmalenumber2]

Nguyên văn bởi Azelinuu:

Nguyên văn bởi MetoolMan:

64 > Melee was a clear evolution.
Melee > Brawl was a step back in competitive play, and Melee players stay with Melee.
Brawl > Sm4sh was a clear improvement, plus a portable version.
Sm4sh > Ultimate was another improvement.

RoA I > RoA II was a regression in it's uniqueness and playstyle. The game is now aiming for Melee players, who always prefer Melee. Sure, RoA I was SIMILAR to Melee, in it's embrace of tech, but it was trying to be it's own thing.

So yeah, the argument is new because the situation is new. This game is a bad sequel.

so 64 to Melee was evolution
you didn't say if Melee to Brawl was evolution or an improvement, just that it was a step back in comp, even then you said Melee players stuck with Melee and that's something you can boil down to someone's preferences and not what the game was supposed to accomplish
you said Brawl all the way to Ult were improvements and not evolutions, but none of those games played like the previous ones at all, so what determines something being an improvement, an evolution, or something someone preferred?

This feels like cherry picking

[Azelinuu]

Nguyên văn bởi ciswhiteheterosexualmalenumber2:

Nguyên văn bởi Azelinuu:

so 64 to Melee was evolution
you didn't say if Melee to Brawl was evolution or an improvement, just that it was a step back in comp, even then you said Melee players stuck with Melee and that's something you can boil down to someone's preferences and not what the game was supposed to accomplish
you said Brawl all the way to Ult were improvements and not evolutions, but none of those games played like the previous ones at all, so what determines something being an improvement, an evolution, or something someone preferred?

This feels like cherry picking

how?

no Smash installment played like the last one with something new added on, playing Kirby from 64 to 4 was familiar only in moveset and different in every other regard

[ciswhiteheterosexualmalenumber2]

Nguyên văn bởi Azelinuu:

Nguyên văn bởi ciswhiteheterosexualmalenumber2:

This feels like cherry picking

how?

no Smash installment played like the last one with something new added on, playing Kirby from 64 to 4 was familiar only in moveset and different in every other regard

Oh mb I didn’t get the point you were trying to make.

Well, I guess my counterpoint would be that an evolution is something that expands on preexisting themes or ideas without radically changing them. People liked the ideas that 64 presented and melee took them to their logical extreme. Brawl, rather than expanding on the vision melee had, rather chose to amp up the casual aspect which to many many people was jarring. The guy you were responding to in this case was comparing roa2 to “brawl but it wanted to go back to melee or something like that”

Roa2 is like melee, but in the broadscope of the smash franchise it’s eerily similar to brawl’s game philosophy. For it to have truly been like melee it should have expanded on the very enjoyable ideas that roa1 presented. It’s weird ik and idk if I’m just spitting out nonsense rn.

Like what if charizard’s final evo randomly became a hydra and became fire water with no build up. It would be cool, sure, and it would have a lot of fans, but it would leave a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouth.

[MetoolMan]

Sm4sh 4 was Brawl with some cranked up speed, no? Like really, isn't that what it is? Same for Ultimate too, they just cranked up some more speed in there, added easy shorthops, among other things?

64 to Melee was clearly an evolution, with the addition of the S-Special and whatnot.

However, Melee to Brawl is a very stark difference. Brawl uses a new engine iirc and it's much slower, and generally different-feeling.

So yeah,

64 > Melee: Evolution
Melee > Brawl: Redirection
Brawl > Ultimate: Improvement

[Azelinuu]

Nguyên văn bởi ciswhiteheterosexualmalenumber2:

Well, I guess my counterpoint would be that an evolution is something that expands on preexisting themes or ideas without radically changing them. People liked the ideas that 64 presented and melee took them to their logical extreme. Brawl, rather than expanding on the vision melee had, rather chose to amp up the casual aspect which to many many people was jarring. The guy you were responding to in this case was comparing roa2 to “brawl but it wanted to go back to melee or something like that”

Roa2 is like melee, but in the broadscope of the smash franchise it’s eerily similar to brawl’s game philosophy. For it to have truly been like melee it should have expanded on the very enjoyable ideas that roa1 presented. It’s weird ik and idk if I’m just spitting out nonsense rn.

Like what if charizard’s final evo randomly became a hydra and became fire water with no build up. It would be cool, sure, and it would have a lot of fans, but it would leave a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouth.

it actually pains me to say this because I have conflicting feelings about how said mechanics are currently, but technically Rivals 2 is an evolution in that it added new mechanics while keeping the old ones still in the game, parries are still there but frame 6 and I don't think I'll ever like that, wavedashes don't have the magic that made me enjoy them but they're still there, etc

honestly I'd even call Brawl an evolution as much as it leaned onto the casual side, Smash has always been more than just a comp platform fighter and that's one of it's greatest strengths, so pandering to the casual side who was always the majority doesn't feel like they betrayed a previous design philosophy

Nguyên văn bởi MetoolMan:

Sm4sh 4 was Brawl with some cranked up speed, no? Like really, isn't that what it is? Same for Ultimate too, they just cranked up some more speed in there, added easy shorthops, among other things?

looking at the Smash wiki alone, there are more noted changes from Melee to Brawl, Brawl to Smash 4, and Smash 4 to Ultimate than there are changes from 64 to Melee, those 3 games were more than simple number changes and they definitely played differently from each other

[MetoolMan]

If we're looking at this competitively, Brawl is a step back.
If we're looking at this casually, sure, it can be called an evolution, but not a very good one.

And of course there are more noted changes, but I'm pretty sure, at their core, they're all the same engines, right?

It's simple, how to allow both casuals and competitors play your game. Design it to be easy and fun to play for beginners, but still keep some depth, and then add more in-depth mechanics to master, but make sure they aren't so overwhelmingly required to play the game normally that casuals can't play. This is the problem with Melee, it's mechanics are overwhelmingly required to play the game, that casuals simply cannot enjoy it, knowing there's more to learn. This is also the problem with Brawl. There's no additional underlying mechanics (for the most part) and the normal gameplay is sluggish and boring.

Putting all that aside, I believe RoA II betrayed RoA I to become another Melee clone.

[Memes'nt've'd't]

Nguyên văn bởi Azelinuu:

Nguyên văn bởi ciswhiteheterosexualmalenumber2:

Well, I guess my counterpoint would be that an evolution is something that expands on preexisting themes or ideas without radically changing them. People liked the ideas that 64 presented and melee took them to their logical extreme. Brawl, rather than expanding on the vision melee had, rather chose to amp up the casual aspect which to many many people was jarring. The guy you were responding to in this case was comparing roa2 to “brawl but it wanted to go back to melee or something like that”

Roa2 is like melee, but in the broadscope of the smash franchise it’s eerily similar to brawl’s game philosophy. For it to have truly been like melee it should have expanded on the very enjoyable ideas that roa1 presented. It’s weird ik and idk if I’m just spitting out nonsense rn.

Like what if charizard’s final evo randomly became a hydra and became fire water with no build up. It would be cool, sure, and it would have a lot of fans, but it would leave a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouth.

it actually pains me to say this because I have conflicting feelings about how said mechanics are currently, but technically Rivals 2 is an evolution in that it added new mechanics while keeping the old ones still in the game, parries are still there but frame 6 and I don't think I'll ever like that, wavedashes don't have the magic that made me enjoy them but they're still there, etc

honestly I'd even call Brawl an evolution as much as it leaned onto the casual side, Smash has always been more than just a comp platform fighter and that's one of it's greatest strengths, so pandering to the casual side who was always the majority doesn't feel like they betrayed a previous design philosophy

Nguyên văn bởi MetoolMan:

Sm4sh 4 was Brawl with some cranked up speed, no? Like really, isn't that what it is? Same for Ultimate too, they just cranked up some more speed in there, added easy shorthops, among other things?

looking at the Smash wiki alone, there are more noted changes from Melee to Brawl, Brawl to Smash 4, and Smash 4 to Ultimate than there are changes from 64 to Melee, those 3 games were more than simple number changes and they definitely played differently from each other

Barring the very important omission of revolutionary mechanics like Drift DI and Whiff lag, which basically created and defined Rivals 1's neutral.

Drift DI being probably this single best rework of a DI mechanic in all of Platfighter in how it simultaneously increases the overall intuitiveness of the game at a base level, but also enables Rivals 1's combo depth
and Whiff lag being created as the answer to spammy aerialmoves, allowing the game to have depth without shields etc.
It's obvious they were removed bc of new legacy mechanics added in, but in the process makes the game more obtuse to learn and less changes how combos and the overall flow is designed.
It just sucks, that we had something so unique only to have it be replaced by Melee/PM again

[Slyther]

I too am not a fan of RoA2 from both a design and mechanics perspective but I nonetheless backed it during it's hype trailers before anything was known. Once I saw that the game was heading into generic 3D over hand crafted sprite art I felt like the soul of the game had been severed. Ontop of that I utterly despised the inclusion of both ledge grabbing and shielding, instead of doubling down on movement and parrying being core tools like in RoA1 they now muddled the mixture of the game's mechanics with more smash-like options instead of refining what they had.

The game calls itself a Rivals of Aether game, but all I see is a smash clone with a skin shop.

[BadRoy]

The more I revisit Rivals 1 the more I prefer it, but I also really like Rivals 2 so far. I also find it hard to be bitter since this was telegraphed since before Rivals 2 was announced I think. Dan wanted -his- Melee and now he has it. But Rivals 1 exists and a lot of us prefer that so idk. It's a pickle.

I hate to be the meme, but Rivals 1 isn't going anywhere. You can play that for the next 20 years if you want. And the RoA2 fans will stick to it.

[Job Application]

Nguyên văn bởi BadRoy:

The more I revisit Rivals 1 the more I prefer it, but I also really like Rivals 2 so far. I also find it hard to be bitter since this was telegraphed since before Rivals 2 was announced I think. Dan wanted -his- Melee and now he has it. But Rivals 1 exists and a lot of us prefer that so idk. It's a pickle.

I hate to be the meme, but Rivals 1 isn't going anywhere. You can play that for the next 20 years if you want. And the RoA2 fans will stick to it.

With what playerbase? RoA2 gutted that since everyone jumped ship, new people aren't gonna get into a game with a playerbase that tiny and all the pros want their big money matches and tournaments in the new game. Like it or not RoA2 quite effectively killed 1, there's a reason people are upset. Dan wanted RoA1 to be closer to this and quite frankly if you look at the success 1 got and your takeaway is "Wow, rivals of aether got huge and people praise the mechanics for being more fast paced and not just another smash clone, I should make another smash clone for the sequel" then idk what to tell you.

[Ereson]

This game definitely was made for Melee enthusiasts, and fans of Project M who want a game where every character is competitively viable. A friend of mine said that Olympia apparently plays a lot like Knuckles from one of the Project M mods.

Personally I wish the game played more like Ultimate, because my aging reflexes make it extremely hard to compete with my friends who are in their 20's. It's still fun don't get me wrong, but I can definitely understand why some people cannot get into the game if they cannot get a strong grip on wave dashing, or other advanced mechanics.

[Memes'nt've'd't]

Nguyên văn bởi Job Application:

Nguyên văn bởi BadRoy:

The more I revisit Rivals 1 the more I prefer it, but I also really like Rivals 2 so far. I also find it hard to be bitter since this was telegraphed since before Rivals 2 was announced I think. Dan wanted -his- Melee and now he has it. But Rivals 1 exists and a lot of us prefer that so idk. It's a pickle.

I hate to be the meme, but Rivals 1 isn't going anywhere. You can play that for the next 20 years if you want. And the RoA2 fans will stick to it.

With what playerbase? RoA2 gutted that since everyone jumped ship, new people aren't gonna get into a game with a playerbase that tiny and all the pros want their big money matches and tournaments in the new game. Like it or not RoA2 quite effectively killed 1, there's a reason people are upset. Dan wanted RoA1 to be closer to this and quite frankly if you look at the success 1 got and your takeaway is "Wow, rivals of aether got huge and people praise the mechanics for being more fast paced and not just another smash clone, I should make another smash clone for the sequel" then idk what to tell you.

can't help but agree
tfw you build a strong fanbase and community around one game, don't see the forest for the trees, and instead of making a sequel to that game make a sequel to melee AGAIN just to pillage those users, ill-advised since they'll go back to smash in a flash (heh). Worse still is that RoA2 would have been poised to win smashers over WHILE also being unique and having strong support unique to its community and franchise, and they blew the innovation of RoA 1 on an attempt at another older game that people already play and notoriously won't STOP playing.
for shame.

[Job Application]

Nguyên văn bởi Memes'nt've'd't:

Nguyên văn bởi Job Application:

With what playerbase? RoA2 gutted that since everyone jumped ship, new people aren't gonna get into a game with a playerbase that tiny and all the pros want their big money matches and tournaments in the new game. Like it or not RoA2 quite effectively killed 1, there's a reason people are upset. Dan wanted RoA1 to be closer to this and quite frankly if you look at the success 1 got and your takeaway is "Wow, rivals of aether got huge and people praise the mechanics for being more fast paced and not just another smash clone, I should make another smash clone for the sequel" then idk what to tell you.

can't help but agree
tfw you build a strong fanbase and community around one game, don't see the forest for the trees, and instead of making a sequel to that game make a sequel to melee AGAIN just to pillage those users, ill-advised since they'll go back to smash in a flash (heh). Worse still is that RoA2 would have been poised to win smashers over WHILE also being unique and having strong support unique to its community and franchise, and they blew the innovation of RoA 1 on an attempt at another older game that people already play and notoriously won't STOP playing.
for shame.

Pretty much, melee players are still playing melee 24 years after release, and if they're not playing that they're playing P+, which is still actively getting serviced and getting new content. There is nothing and I mean NOTHING that you can do with your new game that will pull these people over if all you're trying to be is 'another melee', it's a novelty till the fun dies off and then it's back to ol' reliable, the player count shows it time and time again; there's a spike when a new character comes out, Olympia's release was the biggest surge in player count the game has seen since release, yet already a month later they haven't just dipped back down to what it was pre-Olympia, it's started to dip *lower*. Smash players are long gone, there's zero casual draw because of the lack of content, and players are discouraged from learning how to play at any competent skill level because of the lack of any meaningful tutorialisation or learning tools along with the player pool being primarily hardcore sharks that will just stomp them because, as I just said, the game has zero draw for literally anyone but that small diehard crowd that'd be playing the game anyways.

[✿✿]

I think thats the biggest thing about people who claim "Don't be so steam-charts brained."
Maybe if the peak player count on any day of the weak was above 1-2k. But with a number dwindling every week, I don't know what they could possibly do outside of going

"Okay, we messed up. Massive game engine changes are coming to make things feel more like ROA1 again" or "Here is a massive single player mode we're shadow dropping that has a ton new stuff to do and at the bare minimum has you unlock palletes/skins as you play"

But neither one of these options are feasible.

And its also telling that the fanbase is so split on the new character. People who play her are loving her because she's got so many free options but anyone else is either mad or just straight up left after a day or two of playing against her.

I honestly don't see how its possible to get traction going for this again short of a miracle. It might keep up 600-700 players at peak hours, but (and I might be wrong) it feels like the numbers are already lower than what ROA1 had at the same time last year at any given peak hours.