Melty Blood Discussion

[LJ3]

How about this version since there's an English patch?
Melty Blood Act Cadenza ver.B PC

Or am I better off using that money for Actress Again?

[Cristu]

Apart from the story mode in MB and MBR, story in MB sucks. Do yourself a favor and don't play recent MBs for the story.

MBR gameplay is quite fun, but it's too broken for competition... many other popular fighting games are broken, but MB became a top notch game for competition after it came out for arcade, so if you want to play for gameplay, play MBAACC 1.07 PC (latest MB, the one you'll be able to play online and actually find oponents) or MBAC ver.B2 PC (best game in the series and probably best fighting game overall).

[Skenn]

Quite a lot of people consider that MBAA (and eventually MBAACC 1.07, even if it's a bit worse) was actually better than MBAC though, a matter of personal preference in my opinion.

[Cristu]

I can prove you MBAC > MBAACC 1.07 >>>>>> MBAA.

[Skenn]

I would like you to prove your point please.
If I was to play MBAC I would miss the Moons system quite a bit, it really adds a lot of depth to the game, and it also balances it somehow.

[Spinach]

I can prove you MBAC > MBAACC 1.07 >>>>>> MBAA.

I can prove that MBAACC 1.07 > MBAC.

Hold on let me just pull it out of my magic Hat of Opinion Invalidation.

There it is

[Skenn]

Soko Darou ?!

[Ratman]

MBAA story ain't bad though. It just clearly has tie ins from future works so much of it is difficult to understand.

Or maybe it's just too deep for you.

[Rowanism]

AACC > AC

[012yArthur0]

Warue NE!

[Cristu]

I would like you to prove your point please.
If I was to play MBAC I would miss the Moons system quite a bit, it really adds a lot of depth to the game, and it also balances it somehow.

Since you asked, I hope you can read and understand.

What make a fighting game good? Depth, simplicity, purity, fun, ballance, among some other minor aspects like graphs, sound, etc. First aspect: purity. A fighting game doesn't want infinite combos, so they make ways to avoid it. In more simple games, like Street Fighter, there is no infinites because things almost wont combo at all. The combos are very limited. But if you want a game with longer, complex combos routes, you'll have to work really hard to avoid infinites. The worse the game is, the more intrusive and generic the methods to avoid infinites are. In games like Marvel vs. Capcom, Guilty Gear, Blazblue and even in MBAA, MBAACC and it's sucessors there is this thing called hitstun deterioration. Hitstun deterioration consists in making the character that's being hit recover faster. The more hits, the faster the character can recover so you wont be able to continue long combos. That's a generic and kinda lazy way to assure there wont be infinites. Also, in those games, there is the gravity factor. The higher the number of hits in a combo, the higher the gravity. Another lame generic limitation. In those games, for exemple, you can't trust your combos, because things will change according to the number of hits. Links from a move to another and combo routes will stop working just because the game need to avoid infinites. This is bad, but it's among the best that can be offered. Most of the games have systems worse then that, sadly. However MBAC is the only game (as far as I know) that had a really complex combo system without needing such intrusive methods to prevent infinites and without stupid combo routes like in King of Fighters, where combos consist in loops of the same move.

Let's go to simplicity. A good game is a game where unnecessary things wont interfere with the gameplay. In MBAA and still in MBAACC and it's sucessors, in a minor degree, the screen zooms out. This ruins a little the spacing and the footsie game, because your hitboxes and hurtboxes get bigger and smaller constantly and it's really hard to trust your moves and set parameters. The moon system is another exemple. "The game got deeper" yeah, I also said that to try and promote the game, but I know that it's not true. In fighting games, you want to learn the match-ups: how one specific character should be played against each of the other specific characters. If we count all the moons, and yes, they influence heavily on the match-ups, the number of match-ups we have to learn in MBAA onwards is simply unlearnable because of the moon system. Now consider that people in all cases take over one year to fully understand a match-up. Really, in MBAACC 1.07 it's LITERALLY over 9000 match-ups. That doesnt make a game deeper. I'll talk about depth later. The moon system was actually a problem. It made the game inacessible with all the little unnecessary details... guard bar, ex guard, different bunkers, different shields, different meter and mechanics to each moon. People don't need a lot of different rules, they need to master the existing ones: it's about quality, not quantity. MBAA and it's sucerros fail to be clean and simple.

Let's do depth now. Both MBAC and MBAACC 1.07 are really good on this matter, but MBAC is still a little better. Moslty what makes a fighting game deep is how much the game allows the players to use their skills and knowledge to make the difference. If the game requires more knowledge, it's probably a batsu game, like Street Fighter, where you don't need speed that much, except for reacting and punishing, because that's almost all the game's about. If the game requires more skills, it's probably a fast paced game. About skills, I'll give a very simple exemple. If a game is too slow, your speed skill will be nulified. It will be like your mind is too fast for your body (character). However, if a game is too fast, your speed will also be nulified since you wont be able to control it properly (like in Marvel games and similars). That being said, to be deep, fighting games only need to require skills in the correct ammount: something not beyond the limits of a regular tournament player. If that's done correctly, the neutral game and everything else on that game will be good. In MBAC and MBAACC 1.07 it was done correctly, those games requires skills in the correct ammount. In MBAC, however things are much more intense, since the screen is smaller and wont zoom out. MBAC was also a little faster and more offensive. While this wont make MBAC deeper then MBAACC 1.07 per se, it makes so that it's assured the game will be deep all the time, because characters can't go too far. When they are far (in the recent games), it's a really crappy interaction: most likely a newbe throwing shit or running away instead of playing the actual metagame.

About ballance. Well, the SBO MBAC champion was a bottom tier players. Do I need to say more? MBAC is probably the most ballanced fighting game ever, all the characters were highly viable. In MBAA onwards you can see some overpowered and underpowered characters. Even though it's still really ballanced compared to other fighting games, I would say nowadays before playing you should check the tierlist so you can at least avoid H White Lens and C V.Sions.

About fun. I think most of the people who played MBAC and MBAACC 1.07 thoroughly like MBAC better. It's a simpler, faster, more intense, and because of that, more ellegant game. Again, that's because of the screen. If you watch MBAC matches and MBAACC 1.07 matches, you'll find out that the MBAC are magically more interesting. That's because the characters are closer and things get much more intense. Also, the combos and strings were smaller, so it was much less one sided in terms of time for each player. About minor details, even the sound were better in MBAC. In MBAA they remade a lot of tracks only for it to become worse. Just go and compare. Even the voice announcing "round 1, time over, etc" was better. Check it out. About the graphs, it doesn't change much, it's just as good, just different. It was more clean and ellegant. There are still much more to it, but let's keep is small as I think most of the people here wont be able to grasp it anyway since they're not top players or fighting game experts..

[Mcjon01]

Fucking tournament players lol

[012yArthur0]

While I'm not a competitive fighting game player, I kind of agree to everything you said...

Except for the moons though. I guess it is based about the game competitiveness actually. If the game had such big playerbase and competitiveness as other fighting games, I think the moon styles would be adding depths as how there is always something new to learn, never making the game go stale or "predictable" on a sense. Hell, if I make a odd example, MvC2, by what I know, had always something new as people keep discovering more and more shitty glitches to abuse from in competitive gaming.


And I agree with you. I kind of dislike people jumping around all the time like they want to force their characters to fly or something with projectiles here and there. It destroys the mood of being a fighting, we want to see people actual hits and guards and not air whiffs and constant (and sometimes rather needless) dashing, forcing the camera close fixed that. Sure, it is called "footsie", but I kind of dislike how this take a huge chunk of a fight while it would be more interesting up close.

About the balance aspect, I heard that Act Cadenza had Tohno Shiki and Sion at the top tier raping everything they come up across as long you knew your footsie (for Shiki) or the execution of your attacks (Sion).

Sorry if I said any BS in the second paragraph though, I'm kind of sleepy and I'm not sure if I understood your point.

[Skenn]

MBAACC doesn't have hitstun deterioration, it only has that "gravity" thing. IMO it's a very good way to prevent most infinite, it only really affects very long combos, a few more hits won't change anything, so it's definitely not a problem. The only thing it does affect is long combos with loops for example, as the combo goes you go to tighten your links, but that's just a matter of training, you get use to it really quickly. I really don't mind it if it allows more combo possibilities (and AFAIK MBAACC combos are way more interesting than MBAC combos, which are overall kinda basic).
BTW both games ultimately failed as they both have infinites (F VAkiha has one in MBAACC and IIRC Satsuki has a character specific one in MBAC), but are they really infinites when you can actually circuit spark out of them ?

Zoming out makes some zoning characters more interesting IMO.
You wouldn't learn 9000 MU for competitive play because players usually pick the best moon according to the MU. For example a competitive Roa player who can play all three moons (and any competitive Roa player should be able to) will always pick the best moon against your character, so you basically only have to learn a single MU against Roa at a competitive level.
Also moons specific mechanisms may make the game harder for beginner, but you can learn them pretty quickly and it's not problem at competitive level.
Moons make the game longer to learn, but they also make it more balanced because you can basically play 3 different characters depending on your opponent's character.
And if you consider all 3 moons MBAACC is a really well balanced game, only a few characters aren't considered viables (Nekos, Mech and Miyako ?).

And I agree with you. I kind of dislike people jumping around all the time like they want to force their characters to fly or something with projectiles here and there. It destroys the mood of being a fighting, we want to see people actual hits and guards and not air whiffs and constant (and sometimes rather needless) dashing, forcing the camera close fixed that. Sure, it is called "footsie", but I kind of dislike how this take a huge chunk of a fight while it would be more interesting up close.

But that's what actually makes Melty Blood really interesting: it's a fast paced game with an interesting neutral. You may just wanna play an ASW game if you actually dislike footsies.

[012yArthur0]

MBAACC doesn't have hitstun deterioration, it only has that "gravity" thing. IMO it's a very good way to prevent most infinite, it only really affects very long combos, a few more hits won't change anything, so it's definitely not a problem. The only thing it does affect is long combos with loops for example, as the combo goes you go to tighten your links, but that's just a matter of training, you get use to it really quickly. I really don't mind it if it allows more combo possibilities (and AFAIK MBAACC combos are way more interesting than MBAC combos, which are overall kinda basic).
BTW both games ultimately failed as they both have infinites (F VAkiha has one in MBAACC and IIRC Satsuki has a character specific one in MBAC), but are they really infinites when you can actually circuit spark out of them ?

Zoming out makes some zoning characters more interesting IMO.
You wouldn't learn 9000 MU for competitive play because players usually pick the best moon according to the MU. For example a competitive Roa player who can play all three moons (and any competitive Roa player should be able to) will always pick the best moon against your character, so you basically only have to learn a single MU against Roa at a competitive level.
Also moons specific mechanisms may make the game harder for beginner, but you can learn them pretty quickly and it's not problem at competitive level.
Moons make the game longer to learn, but they also make it more balanced because you can basically play 3 different characters depending on your opponent's character.
And if you consider all 3 moons MBAACC is a really well balanced game, only a few characters aren't considered viables (Nekos, Mech and Miyako ?).


But that's what actually makes Melty Blood really interesting: it's a fast paced game with an interesting neutral. You may just wanna play an ASW game if you actually dislike footsies.

Well, while I like some of the neutral game, I actually would like more of the pressure happening though. I really like when White Len's Mind Game is happening or C. Nanaya Flash Stepping all over the place. I love Confusion-Fu.

[Crown]

Fucking tournament players lol

Meltan is serious business.

[You]

only a few characters aren't considered viables (Nekos, Mech and Miyako ?).

Nekos are the only way to play.

[Ratman]

I shall necro this thread for my purposes, since I love melty and it's the least inappropriate thread to necro.

Recently, in lieu of working during the lockdown, Kamone (person mostly responsible for actual frenchbread gameplay) has been streaming on twitch, which let us talk to him more casually, rather than yelling at him on twitter to fix his 10 years old game. He's said some interesting things thus far. Because of reasons I'm not going to actually post the doc of translations out of respect, it's out there. Mostly it's been stuff like:

"The Crab Hot Pot pixel art had a lot of effort put into it"
"Wara's LA voice was taken in one take"
"Internally the tools to make the game was kind of a mess, no ducuments, buggy buttons that do nothing etc. When I joined I had to make the documents"
"CKoha's 4[B] forces the opponent to stand because 4[B] > 5A(whiff) > Throw is way too strong, so I made it standing to make sure you can't whiff 5A" (^mother of god)
"Aoko used to have 3 mouth pixel arts that move in a loop, and I really didn't like that because I was into Miku at the time. So I pushed for making lipsync animations for the characters."

If you know anything about fighting games, you'd be aware of how the lockdown forced everyone to play online, and made basically everyone yet clueless finally realize how truly terrible most netplay code is, considering how every bit of delay matters in fighting games. Melty, an evergreen game, has seen a bit of a kick in the playerbase much like Skullgirls, since its netcode does not suck... if you steal the game and install a fan-made client.

Frenchbread, for most part, has denied ccaster's existence, in hopes of probably doing better in the future, or due to japanese business ethics. Now, Kamone has been saying he'd add rollback to his games for a while, but the juicy bit of this stream is him outright telling the audience to play Melty on caster if they're going to play it even though it's inappropriate for him to say. This is kind of unprecedented from him, who openly hates having his games tampered with. Maybe he's pissed off about this Mugen thing, but I don't know how that would correlate exactly.

tl;dr play melty it's good enough to bring a salaryman to his knees

-

You could also comb the stream for some spicy hot takes on TM, but there probably aren't any... unless?

[eddyak]

Which Melty version is this? I've only got AACC on Steam any more, the old versions all got thrown out with the bathwater.

[SpoonyViking]

He's said some interesting things thus far. Because of reasons I'm not going to actually post the doc of translations out of respect, it's out there.

Can't you at least give some hints so we know if it's worth our time to look for that doc? Please?