Melee is a good game but the format they use competitively is so agonizingly slow compared to traditional fighting games.
how so? Most people play melee because its fast.
dont debate with my boy boylink125
this nigger know some shit
wasnt debating, just wondering why he thinks this.
I wasn't talking about the game itself. It could be as fast as a fat kid running for the last twinkie on Earth but it doesn't matter because the players are allowed to do "hand warmers" before every game for a ridiculous amount of time. The closest I've seen anybody do in any other game is a quick 5 second button check.
Also, since you brought up the speed of the game itself, it isn't as fast as you seem to think. For starters, there's an 8 minute time limit. In addition to that, only a few characters on the roster are actually fast. The rest of them are either too shitty to be able to do anything or are slow and floaty. Here's a graphic that I made, feel free to argue.
It's a bit of a problem when over half the cast is slow or can't compete with the top tiers
Here's an example of a slow Melee match compared to another fighting game (where the characters are actually balanced):
Notice how, despite being only a best of 3 set to the last game, the Melee one lasts 19 minutes. Pretty slow when you compare it to the ~13 minute best of 5 set of Guilty Gear (which also went to the last game).
I like the game but it's really not that fast.
Game sets do take rather long, by the game being slow I thought you meant gameplay, and i'd argue that any character can be fast, I would especially have not said peach is slow, Armada and MacD put in work with her. every character has very unique play style in this game that changes how the neutral game plays for both sides.
and hand warmers are unberably slow,1 minute is the time they are allowed I think, I personally only ever recall Mew2King or Armada doing them though. and it just so happens its the frame perfect guy and the guy most often compared to m2k lol. I kind of like hand warmers personally, it gives a nice minute of tech skill, I've picked up on something that M2K does that I started doing just by watching him do hand warmers. 8 minute time limit I think is good, 2 minutes per stock, which may sound long but most games are only 3-4 minutes (unless hungrybox and Armada are playing) and from watching which is still longer than street fighter 5 (only non-smash fighting game I watch)
Also samus can compete at top level, most notably Duck and Plup.
Ice Climbers are the only really character that gains anything from being super patient and waiting for something because they can get a grab and wobble the oponenet, See dizzkidboogie and Nintendude.
Samus is one of the few characters to have an even match up with Fox, which is a huge adavantage considering how much the metagame has switched to fox.
(good retirement video from narsicca, gameplay from when she used to play Melee as Cosmo.)
Characters like Zelda and Roy are good example of characters who have really good potential but suffer from 1 or 2 flaws, keep in mind every character has flaws.
Zelda hits very hard but suffers from a laggy grab (12 frames compared to most of the cast who has 7 I think), and multi hit moves, her multihit moves in my opinion are her biggest weakness because most of them are easy to Smash DI out of.
I think that Roy is the best example of this, he is almost identical in Marth, hes a little slower and falls faster but over all I think most people would agree they are similar except for one thing, Marth's sword hits strong from the tip of the blade while roys hits hard from the base, this makes roy players (the 1 there is) have to play more patient and space harder in the neutral game to get combos started, but most of the time roy will still just get crouch cancelled lol so maybe not the best example.
Although I would agree that over half the cast can't compete at high level, but there always are speical snowflakes who manage it, (sadly most of them don't solo main there character anymore and dual main with a top tier)
Shroomed with the occasional Dr. Mario
Axe with Pikachu
AmSa with Yoshi
There is a few luigi mains
There is also some ganon mains,
Also Young Link does rather good against Jigglypuff, I don't know why armada started doing that instead of Peach for a while but im glad he picked up fox younglink vs puff was super boring.
Hungrybox is also a good contender for this argument that any character can play at a high level, how many other top jigglypuffs are there? 1 other in the top 42 and I've never even seen him in top 16 brackets, obviously jigglypuff is considered top tier but still not many people play her at a high level.
the only characters I think are shitty are kirby, bowser and ness and game and watch, fuck those characters especially bowser.
and lol you picked a Hungrybox set that dude gets hated by how patient he plays I personally prefer long sets like EVO 2016 grand finals, despite being incredibly long and both Armada and Hungrybox played patient it was incredibly hype, probably the hype set of the year along with Genesis 3 grand finals and UGC Open Grand finals.
Overall I think that how slow the game is played is really up to whos playing and how the matchup is,
Take a look at this set for example, rather fast Fox/Falco gameplay.
This reply is very messy, i did it before school, i'll probably polish it up when I get home lol.