The PMBR and how they handle those who mod/hack Project M

[ESPeR]

LC-DMM: I'm.. not even going to bother going into too much detail. Somebody from the PMBR already said most of what I need to say. The red statements you highlighted are not untrue like you said, and you can figure that out by playing Project M 2.5, or even going on the website and reading the news updates or change list. Melee fans don't like that there are such bad characters in Melee, just like Brawl players don't like how the bottom four characters are literally and statistically broken. Project Ms tournament scene and heck, honestly even the frame data prove that they have succeeded at balancing the broken characters in both Melee and Brawl. Ike is AWFUL in Brawl from a statistical standpoint, determined by match-ups, frame data, and money match statistics. There ARE great Brawl Ike players and they still do best when equally skilled players play similar tier characters, especially Shiek. Anyways, an Ike main got second place at Melee FCs Project M tourney. Many top-tier characters have had chaingrabs removed, such as Ganondorf and Falco.

I've already gone on much longer than I would prefer, I think it's silly you're slinging ad-homonym attacks and aggression in a thread criticizing a group of people of doing the same thing and the negative repercussions of that. Everybody else has been able to talk on a respectable, down to earth level, and show that they are knowledgeable. A lot of the people in this thread helped work on a game that a lot of people play. I'm very happy to be able to communicate with them on this level.

Velen: There are quite a few changes to vets. Falco retains his "spin and spin and spin and spin" attack from Brawl for added spacing options. Mario becomes like a combination of both Mario and Dr. Mario, Dr. Mario being a relevant character in Melee tourneys. Ganondorf retains Flame Choke for tech-chasing. Bowser's design was assisted by Gimpyfish, a well known Bowser player, and now features exploitation of heavy armor.  Uhm, there's more. There's a changelog. Anyways, you raise a good point. Project M will never break -too- far away from Melee. Even when they make changes it's to fit in line with a Melee like play-style. That's why I think more people should take advantage of the engine and make there own games that use it.

Miacis: Thank you! That is really helpful information, and already changes a lot about what I believe. I just assumed somebody from the PMBR worked for KC-MM and made the edit after the report.

Shadic: I guess you're right, to be fair it's not like I see this reported phenomena of anti-modding behavior very often. I just noticed it and really wanted to know what you guys thought. I'm... pretty satisfied with all I've learned in this thread, actually. Thank you, too. I do know that the game is a WIP, but I think as long as people make it clear that there mod is a mod, than some of the things discovered by modders that actually are good could be incorporated somehow. Like a collective effort on the part of the community. But yeah, you gotta put your foot down somewhere. I understand and even respect that, and I have a better opinion of the whole situation now that I've had the chance to learn more. Some Project M players are gonna be very adamant about seeing that the game they love is respected, hype does things to people, and that's alright.

Wait, someone mentioned pm content not working in vBrawl? What exact content are you speaking about? I can't think of anything that we deliberately disabled for use in vBrawl. If something doesn't work, it's because it needs codes that make pm what it is to function, which you wouldn't want in vBrawl.

Basically, if some things don't work in vBrawl, it's not some sinister plot to engineer it that way.

That's interesting, and good to know.

[Shadic]

But that means that alternate possibilities for a character (Falco being, like Velen said, better on air) won't be tried out at all, will they?

Why would we completely redo a character that is widely popular and has enjoyed a decade of tournament success? That'd be a slap to people who enjoy that character as he currently plays. Not to mention how much criticism we've already gotten for being too "change happy" on things that we didn't need to touch. (There was a huge outcry when we removed Wario's bike, for example.)

Project M is being made to appeal to several types of gamers. Oftentimes these different "bases" have wildly different opinions on things. We try and keep in mind how these things will "sell" to the public, but ultimately we do what we think is best for the project with the resources, goodwill, and time we have available.

All I want is a PAL release, really.

Making everything PAL-ready would essentially double the amount of work we'd have to do. Which is why we're not planning a PAL release until after we go "Gold."

I had heard 2.5 movesets don't work in vB.

We had to restructure some engine stuff, which is why every 2.5 character has a .rel file in 2.5. It'll crash without them. It's not something we did to dissuade people from using 2.5 characters in Brawl, it's something we did to make the game the best that it can be.


Edit: Adding in a few minor things that I missed before that I think should be addressed.

Because really, show me something where at one point people gave Brawl a chance for being a new installment, and I'll show you people that are lying, because Melee is really the only "good" Smash game in their eyes.

Melee fans were extremely excited for Brawl. Just because the game ended up disappointing them doesn't mean they were never willing to accept something new.

Watch Gimpyfish a well-known Bowser player and eventual PMBR member talk about Brawl before it came out. People were huge on every bit of Brawl news they could pick up on, and definitely tried their hardest to enjoy the game when it came out. If they sound/act conservative now, it's probably because Nintendo hasn't made a Smash game they've enjoyed in over a decade.

Also, there's a difference between a hobby mod, even if built better, and a group of people who sacrifice hours upon hours of their lives, sleeping in the office even, and being constantly rushed by fans to release the game. Sakurai damn near killed himself working too hard, and yes, the product wasn't polished, but there is no one to blame but the fans' greed for wanting the game.

Just so you know, Melee was the game that he pushed himself for. Your comment seems to be referring to Brawl, which isn't quite accurate.

"On a personal level, Melee had an extremely grueling development cycle," Sakurai wrote. "Some of my other games did, too, but Melee sticks out far ahead of the pack in my mind. I worked on that game for 13 months straight, after all, without a single Sunday or holiday off that whole time. During parts of it, I was living a really destructive lifestyle -- I'd work for over 40 hours in a row, then go back home to sleep for four."

[Miacis]

ad-homonym

Well tried! That was almost right.
But the word is Ad Hominem. It's about directing an attack towards a person/human. Not towards a ... word that is pronounced and spelt the same as another.

The PMBR is big enough these days that we very hardly outsource work anymore. And I can't think of anything in P:M that we haven't spoken with the original creator over. (I spoke with Robzdahero about Dracula's Castle, which iirc is one of our biggest things originally done by somebody outside of the PMBR.)

Well, I've heard of an opposite tale about using non-PMBR material, though in not enough detail I'm afraid.
I doubt everyone in your team is necessarily as straight with the creators as you say you are yourself, and that's probably why I just keep hearing some bad hearsays about P:M just taking whatever they want from the Vault.  

Why would we completely redo a character that is widely popular and has enjoyed a decade of tournament success? That'd be a slap to people who enjoy that character as he currently plays. Not to mention how much criticism we've already gotten for being too "change happy" on things that we didn't need to touch. (There was a huge outcry when we removed Wario's bike, for example.)

Project M is being made to appeal to several types of gamers. Oftentimes these different "bases" have wildly different opinions on things. We try and keep in mind how these things will "sell" to the public, but ultimately we do what we think is best for the project with the resources, goodwill, and time we have available.

So ... as a conclusion, you guys keep the Melee characters almost exactly as they were because you do believe it's what "you think is best"? Or because of the public outcry?
Getting some mixed signals there, trying to follow this conversation. Are you doing this because you decided to listen to the anti-change portion of your vastly diverse audience? Or because you, as hackers, believe that these characters would not benefit from being changed from their Melee incarnation?

We don't like people ripping stuff off of P:M without acknowledging it.

I do agree on the thieving part of it. Claiming that something you didn't make is yours is certainly not something we enjoy too, but...
I'm curious about the choice of words there. Why "ripping"? oô

[Shadic]

(How you set up your quotes makes it look like I don't know how to spell Ad hominem.)

Well, I've heard of an opposite tale about using non-PMBR material, though in not enough detail I'm afraid.
I doubt everyone in your team is necessarily as straight with the creators as you say you are yourself, and that's probably why I just keep hearing some bad hearsays about P:M just taking whatever they want from the Vault.  

Can you come up with examples? It's a pretty unfair claim to say that "the hearsay" says that we're yanking hacks off of random people.

So ... as a conclusion, you guys keep the Melee characters almost exactly as they were because you do believe it's what "you think is best"? Or because of the public outcry?
Getting some mixed signals there, trying to follow this conversation. Are you doing this because you decided to listen to the anti-change portion of your vastly diverse audience? Or because you, as hackers, believe that these characters would not benefit from being changed from their Melee incarnation?

Rarely is something black and white. If somebody has criticized it, we've probably had a discussion over it in the backroom.

I do agree on the thieving part of it. Claiming that something you didn't make is yours is certainly not something we enjoy too, but... I'm curious about the choice of words there. Why "ripping"? oô

First word that came to mind. Also I was long ago from the spriting community where people would "rip" sprites from games. 

[LC-DDM]

Why would we completely redo a character that is widely popular and has enjoyed a decade of tournament success? That'd be a slap to people who enjoy that character as he currently plays. Not to mention how much criticism we've already gotten for being too "change happy" on things that we didn't need to touch. (There was a huge outcry when we removed Wario's bike, for example.)

So basically, just keep everything the samey washed-up drivel in favour of pro-favoritism.

Project M is being made to appeal to several types of gamers. Oftentimes these different "bases" have wildly different opinions on things. We try and keep in mind how these things will "sell" to the public, but ultimately we do what we think is best for the project with the resources, goodwill, and time we have available.

Fair enough.

Making everything PAL-ready would essentially double the amount of work we'd have to do. Which is why we're not planning a PAL release until after we go "Gold."

Also fair enough, but I have my personal reasons to wait for it.

We had to restructure some engine stuff, which is why every 2.5 character has a .rel file in 2.5. It'll crash without them. It's not something we did to dissuade people from using 2.5 characters in Brawl, it's something we did to make the game the best that it can be.

If you say so, but that doesn't help me in any way. I mean right now the only way to get the good Snake would be to get 2.1, and unless you made him even more Snake-esque in 2.5, I don't feel I'm going to miss much.

LC-DMM: I'm.. not even going to bother going into too much detail.

Yeah, because -clearly- you've had an issue earlier making up walls of text that could build a hypothetical house. But, again, not the point here. Moving on.

Somebody from the PMBR already said most of what I need to say. The red statements you highlighted are not untrue like you said, and you can figure that out by playing Project M 2.5, or even going on the website and reading the news updates or change list.

...that has nothing to do with what I just said. I said that, barring the red bits (meaning, what is -highlighted in red-), everything you mouthed off can be done, word for word, in vB.  You probably understood it wrong and thought that the red wasn't in P:M when it's the opposite, but at this point I don't know if what you say makes sense.

Melee fans don't like that there are such bad characters in Melee, just like Brawl players don't like how the bottom four characters are literally and statistically broken. Project Ms tournament scene and heck, honestly even the frame data prove that they have succeeded at balancing the broken characters in both Melee and Brawl. Ike is AWFUL in Brawl from a statistical standpoint, determined by match-ups, frame data, and money match statistics. There ARE great Brawl Ike players and they still do best when equally skilled players play similar tier characters, especially Shiek. Anyways, an Ike main got second place at Melee FCs Project M tourney. Many top-tier characters have had chaingrabs removed, such as Ganondorf and Falco.

I like how you seperated Melee -fans- from Brawl -players-, despite the fact you used them as if anyone who plays either of those games -has- to be a pro.

I've already gone on much longer than I would prefer, I think it's silly you're slinging ad-homonym attacks and aggression in a thread criticizing a group of people of doing the same thing and the negative repercussions of that. Everybody else has been able to talk on a respectable, down to earth level, and show that they are knowledgeable. A lot of the people in this thread helped work on a game that a lot of people play. I'm very happy to be able to communicate with them on this level.

Like I said, me respecting the work P:M took doesn't mean I have to like it. You can call it agression, I call it "against the grain".

[ESPeR]

Shadic, I would agree it was thievery if we weren't talking about a mod that still uses a lot of content from Brawl, including most of the engine. Although, the fact that PM is an unfinished Project and the way it's going so far, I can imagine it'll be mostly original by the time it's done. After all, foreign bootleg merchandise like fake iPhones are basically thieving by using the design of the iPhone, claiming it's theirs, and making profit, so the connotation between modding your content and thievery isn't actually too far off. But isn't that the nature of Brawl mods, and doesn't that in itself change the context?

Or am I misunderstanding, and taking what you said out of context? I feel like I might be.

I would like to add that in programming it is extremely common to take shortcuts by basically not programming what's already been programmed, which is another thing that I think changes the context of what thievery entails with freeware.

[LC-DDM]

Melee fans were extremely excited for Brawl. Just because the game ended up disappointing them doesn't mean they were never willing to accept something new.

Ah, but I wouldn't call changing a new installment into an update of the last one "accepting" something -new-.

Watch Gimpyfish, a well-known Bowser player and eventual PMBR member talk about Brawl before it came out. People were huge on every bit of Brawl news they could pick up on, and definitely tried their hardest to enjoy the game when it came out. If they sound/act conservative now, it's probably because Nintendo hasn't made a Smash game they've enjoyed in over a decade.

I like that guy, if only because he pretty much said "[censored] you" to any tier-addicts and used Bowser when he was low-tier. Respect for him, at least.

Just so you know, Melee was the game that he pushed himself for. Your comment seems to be referring to Brawl, which isn't quite accurate.

Fair enough, misconception on my end. Still, you have to admit that if we were to wait longer instead of demanding for the game to be released, the outcome would be at least more polished. Less glitches, at least. Or maybe more demo builds at different times so there would be a chance to change things before release.

[/quote]

[Miacis]

(Fixed. :3)

(How you set up your quotes makes it look like I don't know how to spell Ad hominem.)Can you come up with examples? It's a pretty unfair claim to say that "the hearsay" says that we're yanking hacks off of random people.

Well, it's hearsay, and vague one at that, so no, I'm afraid I don't have any actual examples. Some people around here may be more informed than me (I'm rarely involved in these kinds of credits issues, tbh), but I'm just reporting what I heard about P:M taking stuff directly.
I'm a believer that there's no smoke without fire so, again, you might want to look into it and see that nobody is taking for granted any of the stuff that was made outside of P:M. Texture, sounds, specific moves, codes... anything. And if you're already doing it, well... keep going, I guess.

Rarely is something black and white. If somebody has criticized it, we've probably had a discussion over it in the backroom.

Then, I'm still a bit confused how you guys listened to the anti-change guys for all Melee characters AND think all the Melee characters are better without any major change. But for the Brawl characters, the outcry was apparently rejected several times and redoing the characters was deemed a necessity.

All in all, it doesn't really answer why Melee characters were deemed so perfect.

[HaloedHero]

Well, I've heard of an opposite tale about using non-PMBR material, though in not enough detail I'm afraid.
I doubt everyone in your team is necessarily as straight with the creators as you say you are yourself, and that's probably why I just keep hearing some bad hearsays about P:M just taking whatever they want from the Vault.  

I find this troubling. If someone took something from the vault without asking, a higher ranking PMBR member would/should have noticed/been notified and the situation would have been rectified. We do not use the work of other people if at all avoidable, and we always ask. It'd be very hard for a member to slip in something stolen.

[LC-DDM]

I find the most funny thing, is that when Dracula's Castle went into P:M, news sites across the interwebs deemed it something that hasn't been done before... when you could already do it in --surprise-- vB.

Case of misinformation, but still.

[Shadic]

(Fixed. :3)Well, it's hearsay, and vague one at that, so no, I'm afraid I don't have any actual examples. Some people around here may be more informed than me (I'm rarely involved in these kinds of credits issues, tbh), but I'm just reporting what I heard about P:M taking stuff directly.
I'm a believer that there's no smoke without fire so, again, you might want to look into it and see that nobody is taking for granted any of the stuff that was made outside of P:M. Texture, sounds, specific moves, codes... anything. And if you're already doing it, well... keep going, I guess.

Can you please provide names of people who have mentioned this to you? It's a pretty serious allegation (Especially coming from an Admin of KC-MM) and you seem to be sidestepping effort on our part to track it down.

Then, I'm still a bit confused how you guys listened to the anti-change guys for all Melee characters AND think all the Melee characters are better without any major change. But for the Brawl characters, the outcry was apparently rejected several times and redoing the characters was deemed a necessity.

What makes you think we didn't change Melee characters? Look at Bowser, where his armor is now a major part of his viability. Look at Toon Link, who gets a lot of hate from people wanting Young Link 2.0. We've changed Sheik's DownThrow, much to the distaste of Melee Sheik players. Ganon has a lot of cool new things, etc.

[HaloedHero]

I don't understand how you can believe in "no smoke without a fire," when the allegations in this thread are an example of just that. There is no fire, but you're making smoke.

I don't like it, considering people will read this thread and think it's true just because you said it.

[Miacis]

Can you please provide names of people who have mentioned this to you? It's a pretty serious allegation (Especially coming from an Admin of KC-MM) and you seem to be sidestepping effort on our part to track it down.

It's just your word against that of others so far, so it's really that I'm trying not to take any side.
And, honestly, do I absolutely need to muzzle myself just because some hearsays 'might' give a somewhat bad image of a SSBB mod? On a thread read by probably like 10 users at most past the first page of walls of text? In posts of mine that I'll probably just erase if it proved to be a completely false lead?
Surely there's been a lot of time and effort that were put into this project. But I think you're taking my ramblings a little too seriously there.

I'm not really sure what dropping names here would accomplish besides making these people the direct center of attention (and annoying the limited audience we have here). I'll ask around and try to gather some chatlogs and whatnot and dump-PM them to you later so you can investigate at your leisure if that can reassure you. I'll send a copy to HaloedHero too.

Oh, and by the way, I'm not talking here as a representative of KCMM. At least not past the second quote in my first post.

What makes you think we didn't change Melee characters? Look at Bowser, where his armor is now a major part of his viability. Look at Toon Link, who gets a lot of hate from people wanting Young Link 2.0. We've changed Sheik's DownThrow, much to the distaste of Melee Sheik players. Ganon has a lot of cool new things, etc.

You'll have to admit, however, that those are very punctual and minor things compared to the changes that some characters like Wario, Lucario, Snake or Lucas underwent. Why didn't, say, Falco get so much attention to be made unique, if we go back on a seemingly popular example? He instead got reverted to his previous clonish state, save for, what? 2 attacks?

And you don't even have to look that far into the issue to see the reason. Quoted diretly from your website :
"Falco Lombardi is a very respected and equally feared name among the competitive Smash community, so it's no surprise that expectations for him are high going into Project M. He was one of the most changed characters from Melee to Brawl, losing many of his tricks and techniques that defined him in the previous game. Project M sees the return of the old bird of prey though, with his technical prowess restored in its entirety."
"As one of Melee's well-known Top Tier characters, great care was taken to recreate Falco's Melee-styled gameplay.

Why was Falco unchanged from Melee? Not because it would make him a more interesting or unique character, but because he was more powerful, "top tier", in Melee, so he needs to go back to it.

I could pursue a similar argument for Ganon. You'd have to be really bold to sustain that this move is an improvement for Ganon compared to his SSBB one. It's just trying to "restore" what was changed, completely disregarding the idea of what fits a character. And his Up-Smash is just as silly.

With those and most other Melee vets being systematically "restored" to their older state, it's difficult not to think that P:M's priorities are first to restore the Melee moves of a character, no matter how innappropriate or common, and improving their gameplay with Brawl/New moves only comes as an afterthought.

[shanus]

It's just your word against that of others so far, so it's really that I'm trying not to take any side.
And, honestly, do I absolutely need to muzzle myself just because some hearsays 'might' give a somewhat bad image of a SSBB mod? On a thread read by probably like 10 users at most past the first page of walls of text? In posts of mine that I'll probably just erase if it proved to be a completely false lead?
Surely there's been a lot of time and effort that were put into this project. But I think you're taking my ramblings a little too seriously there.

I'm not really sure what dropping names here would accomplish besides making these people the direct center of attention (and annoying the limited audience we have here). I'll ask around and try to gather some chatlogs and whatnot and dump-PM them to you later so you can investigate at your leisure if that can reassure you. I'll send a copy to HaloedHero too.

Oh, and by the way, I'm not talking here as a representative of KCMM. At least not past the second quote in my first post.

Sadly, our team has experience verifying when our content has been plagiarized, so there is evidence beyond "our words against theres." It comes down to simply comparing if content/animations are frame-for-frame exact replicas, and given that we keep an ongoing subversion, we have recursive history as our animations have been built and refined over time. For this reason, I find it extremely unlikely that any work for Project M has not been completed internally by our team, given the fairly strict and peer-review standards we have in place. However, our team is interested in understanding these, so we welcome the names/data you offered to provide.

You'll have to admit, however, that those are very punctual and minor things compared to the changes that some characters like Wario, Lucario, Snake or Lucas underwent. Why didn't, say, Falco get so much attention to be made unique, if we go back on a seemingly popular example? He instead got reverted to his previous clonish state, save for, what? 2 attacks?

And you don't even have to look that far into the issue to see the reason. Quoted diretly from your website :
"Falco Lombardi is a very respected and equally feared name among the competitive Smash community, so it's no surprise that expectations for him are high going into Project M. He was one of the most changed characters from Melee to Brawl, losing many of his tricks and techniques that defined him in the previous game. Project M sees the return of the old bird of prey though, with his technical prowess restored in its entirety."
"As one of Melee's well-known Top Tier characters, great care was taken to recreate Falco's Melee-styled gameplay.

Why was Falco unchanged from Melee? Not because it would make him a more interesting or unique character, but because he was more powerful, "top tier", in Melee, so he needs to go back to it.

I think it might help you if I share a bit of Project M's history to better answer this question (and who I am, if you are unfamiliar). My history dates back to when I led the development of Brawl+, and left that modding team when I was no longer interested in its development. As someone who thoroughly enjoyed brawl modding, I set-out on a personal project (originally, as purely a thought experiment) to see if I can bring melee falco to brawl because I was a greater fan of melee. There was a lot of interest in this, the team grew, and project m was born with melee falco as a base.

However, I understand your concerns as to how/why we pursue things the way we do. The answer is that, to no surprise, our team was/is fans of melee and we used melee top tiers as our target base to build up to. However, this by no means suggests that we do not accept that brawl content cannot be quality (e.g. preservation of RAR, footstooling). Shadic provided an excellent point of Toon Link, who had a majority of his animations (and underlying moveset coding) built from scratch. He may not look like a radical overhaul like a lucario or wario, but I guarantee the underlying work was there.

This also tees up another point I want to make. The changes we make do not need to be explicitly justified with evidence. Due to the nature that we are building up an entire mod from scratch, I think its understandable that we use our judgement and style and apply the animtions that we believe best aligns with this style. If you think ganon looks better one way, I can argue it looks better the other. We built a team which internally has a strong alignment for specific aesthetics, and our resulting product is reflective of that.

[Velen]

I think the whole thing with Falco has been misdirected and taken off course.

My thing with Falco is the fact he is now back to his clone-ish state. This turns me off personally. Before you pull the "Many vs. Few" card out of somewhere. Allow me to bring something to the table:

Clones was one of the things Melee was criticized for by some people. Falco and Fox, C.Falcon and Ganondorf, Roy an Marth, Dr.Mario and Mario(the former two examples not being in Brawl), were all clones of each other. With mainly aesthetic changes and little nuances. Those little things do not a separate character make, and this is what turns me off with Falco.

I feel that being the who he is, Falco needs to be changed. I know this is a very selfish thing to say, but the Melee veterans be damned, Falco as he is, is too much like Fox. Even with his nuances. It has nothing to do with animations anymore for me. It's his move set and the way it plays.

 I think he needs to be diversified further, and have his gameplay evolved in a new direction. A more air-oriented combo game would work wonders in doing that, giving him new moves or revamping the olds ones, with the goal being keeping opponents in the air as much as possible. making him a little, tiny bit floatier to facilitate that.

That's the kind of changes I want to see to Brawl Veterens and Melee Top Tiers alike. Falco being so much like Fox feels unnatural and it doesn't fit his character. At all, and as I gave with my previous example of Wolf, he has moves recognizable from Fox, but the majority of his moveset differs from Fox's in function and animation alike, and he is the most diverse between the three Space Animals.

That's what Falco needs. He doesn't need to be returned to his Melee roots. He needs true change. He could be just as tourney viable if time was put into making such a moveset to divide between Falco and Fox. Same with Ganondorf.

As I said before. The similarities between Mario and Luigi (whereas they were clones of each other in Smash 64) is passable because they are brothers. It makes sense that Luigi would take after Mario. Fox and Falco share no such relationship, and as the game canon for Star Fox shows, Falco likes to do things his way, and combined with his statement "personally, I prefer the air" and his avian descent, I think it's pretty clear the direction Falco could go in if the team was willing to put effort into such a thing.

It's not about looks, it's about how he plays that disappoints me. Brawl did the right thing bringing further diversity between Fox and Falco, but did it admittedly poorly. So why can't the PMBR do better by truly diversifying them the right way?

Tying this into what Miacis said in his post:

Why was Falco unchanged from Melee? Not because it would make him a more interesting or unique character, but because he was more powerful, "top tier", in Melee, so he needs to go back to it.

That's a poor excuse to simply revert a character to how they were in the previous game IMHO, and saying "wait a bit and let us see how things play out in Project M 2.5's meta" is an even poorer excuse. I want to see the PMBR do what Sakurai didn't do, and make him a king of air combat. Give him new abilities, and keep a lot of his old-tricks as well, like you did with Lucario. So that way, Fox and Falco are their own characters instead of being near clones as they are.

Ganondorf could stand to get the same treatment as well. Separating him and Captain Falcon further.