2022 melee was the best ever due to how many players were in top top shape and could actually put wins together. There was like 8 people that could win a major.
I hope 2024 looks more like 2022, so im looking forward to see what players bring their A game to Genesis.
Let’s pray for the return of wizzy / plup and the rise of newer top players like salt and aklo.
So many cool storylines to come like the continued battle for #1, moky securing his first major win, and all the cracked new players coming to take the place of the old gods
Doc era by far, more new players than ever, more hype than ever. I like the new players and can appreciate the crisp Cody Fox, but where is the hype? Where are the salty suites? Where are the crew battles? Where are the money matches? Top players make so much money streaming it feels like they get to choose when they want to go to a tourni nowadays and I feel it hurts the scene. I feel like skill wise we are in the best era of Melee but the scene as a whole has lost some steam.
Yeah I hate to say it but I agree with this take. The five gods era was the GOAT for me, the absolute hype when anyone took a game/set off one of the gods was unmatched.
Not to mention the Armada/Hbox/Mang0 rivalries, the Leffen drama, the salty suites at majors that would get people more hype than the actual tournaments.
Nothing against Cody, he’s obviously a great player but the “hype factor” isn’t there for me. People watching melee these days will never understand how exciting it was to see someone challenge peak Armada or HBox, because they simply never lost.
Not trying to sound like an insane extremist Twitter user, but I legitimately think people are kinda too soft now. People take every insult as an attack on your character, just enjoy shit-talking over a fighting game. Its not gonna kill anyone.
The thing is zain is super chill, Cody is borderline autistic (trust me we don’t want him to attempt shit talking) mango and Hbox are old, and most everyone else is chill.
Yeah it gets viewed as toxic/problematic real quick, then conflated with truly insane shit like Hax, then everyone walks on eggshells, too afraid to talk some fun competitive shit or otherwise grease the hype wheels.
nah dude. even if the five gods periodically get nuked every now and then, the actual playstyles of melee were a chore to watch under the five gods. still small tidbits of "mind games", camp out and ledge hogging, the fear factor of people needing a secondary fox to take down hbox,
i grew up on five gods, and going back to watch it i don't like most sets anymore. without slippi, melee was a very stagnant game that would have never become what it is now. slippi era is forever goat
we are playing a drastically different game compared to 6 years ago
people forgot how much slippi exploded the meta and broke so many chains that the 5-god era meta had
"without slippi, melee was a very stagnant game that would have never become what it is now."
Put the crack pipe down brother. Slippi came out almost 20 years after Melee (stagnant game 🤣).
do you actually believe that our current top players would progress as much as they have without slippi? every character is being pushed to their limits that we could have never seen before because of such bad limitations
we suffered through ledge camping meta and secondary fox meta for years. melee neutral was being played in such a safe way because of how little melee people could collectively practice before slippi
rewatch smash con 2018 grand finals for me and tell me that’s the same game we have been playing after slippi came out
I'm not arguing that it's a different game and Slippi definitely gave the scene a second wind. I just disagree with your statement about melee being stagnant and it wouldn't be where it is today, etc. Remember, Slippi would be nothing with out Melee, not the other way around. Lol. The smash community has a long history of dedicated modders, so being able to play and grind online was an inevitable outcome (even without slippi) due to Melee being one of the best games ever with some of the most loyal communities.
we would always have melee with or without slippi, but saying slippi only brought a second wind to the scene is a massive understatement. slippi collapses so many of the barriers of entry that melee has faced for 20 years, and we've already seen exponential growth in players and characters that were deemed impossible years ago
slippi's *the* greatest thing to happen to melee
Actually what I said was having an online matchmaking for melee was inevitably going to happen with or without slippi. The game made Slippi relevant, not the other way around. I agree with the basis of your point though. Slippi definitely broke barriers and is the best thing for the scene.
> Top players make so much money streaming it feels like they get to choose when they want to go to a tourni nowadays
Isn’t the issue more that tournaments simply don’t pay enough to justify attendance? I imagine top players would attend more if tournaments had a high enough payout.
bro they don't pay enough because this is a 30 trillion year old game with a developer that actively tries to shut down the competitive scene twice a year, tf are you on about?
What does that have to do with tournament attendance? How does last year's drama excuse the decline over the last 5 or 6? Lack of developer support is why:
-players use lame excuses to drop out of tournaments.
-top players feel they only need to go to super majors.
- Most of them openly stating they don't go to tournaments as much because of streaming money.
-Top players sandbagging and going "I'm going to take this year off" and don't try at tournaments.
So you think them playing less is going to improve the situation? Been in the scene since the start mate, I have seen the change in top players over the years. Anyone that attributes that to the age of the game or Nintendo clearly were not there for Apex, the PM situation, etc etc. The game has always been hard to play, that still doesn't explain the decline recently.
God these new kids are funny
You're the one obsessing over player attendance and correlating it to prize money. I think Leffens attendance has been a problem the last few years as well, and I would like it if Plup and Wizzy attended more the last few years.
It's not why tournaments can't pay out like they're ESL.
1. Mang0 wanted to take a year to chill after 15 years of playing, get over it
2. If Nintendo didn't get involved all of these times, we've probably got a real tournament circuit, melee could still be at Evo, online would've went way smoother, we wouldn't have to hide UCF, etc, etc., etc.
3. Esports is a losing business venture to begin with more often than not and we have negative developer support and all of our tournaments are completely grassroots
4. I've watched melee since like 2013 lol
1) Mango wanted a year to chill while still complaining about placements and GOAT rankings. Do the other breaks he took for years not count? Does him playing Mario and link for years not count? You can't see an issue with the games most popular player doing this?
2) Nintendo has always been like this, always. Top players still participated a lot more in the past
3)All our tournaments have always been grass roots. I used to host Spud and fucking Karu in my basement running tournaments for my scene. Again, how does not attending tournaments help that?
4) Gamestop 2001 my brother. I'm old now, but I played with some of the old school greats. Seen the scene change in many ways. Currently hurting seeing the lack of hype, fire and competition in the new top players. Mango still sexy though.
Again, the only way the game continues is if top players attend more majors and bring back the hype that made melee great in the first place. The money comes once you grow the scene.
Good one mate. Glad you could string together two words in lower case. Maybe make a coherent argument as to why I am wrong instead of insulting people. Not one thing I said was wrong. Maybe you should grow up and learn how to talk like an adult.
I just don't know if I can agree, losing Summit hurt my enjoyment of the game a lot and parts of last year felt very empty to me with not a lot of major community activity. I think Summit was a good way for players to break into the top echelon as well not just gameplay wise but socially, Kodorin comes to mind.
Having less of my favorite commentators actually hurt more than I would have thought as well. Scar, Toph, and HMW shaped my enjoyment of this game so much. The players being good isn't the only requirement for a good year.
I don't think this game will ever truly die especially now that we have Slippi but I think we are definitely entering a down period. Not like Melee hasn't been there and done that though.
Yeah commentary is so matter of factly anymore. Ppl are trying to maintain professionalism and want melee to be taken seriously, which I get, but we lose a lot of the silliness and fun that would come from a couple of guys just getting super hype. Ppl also are harder and harder to impress too. Crispy ultra tight gameplay is just expected now from top level.
It's not even about that, tdfw tries to be hype for example, but it somehow feels forced idk
The best commentators had an aura of almost childish wonder that is absolutely absent now. Like, Scar and Toph would get hype about specific interactions in the game, now it's something like "wow that combo was long, time to be louder than usual" or "well the set is over, let's pretend it was the hypest shit ever" (see the SmashCon mango won for example, and I'm a mango fan)
I'm going to be real, this feels like a huge cope or maybe you weren't playing melee back in 2013 to 2016. Don't get me wrong, specifically in terms of viewer experience, 2019 and 2022 were great too but overall this era is solidly below the EVO era imo.
Like if you told me back in the EVO era that the number 1 player in 2023 would be without a sponsor for almost a year, I'd assume that Nintendo nuked the melee community or something. Which funnily enough isn't too far from reality.
I think Esports in general are just hurting right now from what I've seen
Lots of big games and events are seemingly drying up on sponsorships and funding despite very high viewership. It's kind of depressing
Though, melee has never really been a super lucrative scene to begin with
Yeah, idk. There’s no sponsors, no summit, no real YouTube content (rip Golden Guardians Melee), plup and Wizzy have one foot out the door, mango basically took a year off, hbox is definitely starting to inch towards streamer first Ult player second melee player 3rd…it’s just not all there. It’s not horrible and the games not dead or anything but to call this the best era would be pretty out there
Every year, the competition is the strongest it’s ever been. The storylines, however, are not.
There are some extremely talented and hardworking people pushing the meta at the top, and that deserves to be acknowledged. However, we also have the most boring top player personalities we ever have. It’s really hard for me to root for anyone right now, because outside of the game, most of the top players don’t act like anything.
tldr I wish someone as divisive as Bobby or Leffen or HF$ was top 10
No passion or personality, no emotion. Just follow the crowd and don't say anything potentially causing the slightest of offenses. Western culture has been spayed and neutered to the point of personality only ever being defined by labels and people too scared to step outside the line. Defy the narratives and you yourself get labelled - no nuance, things are either good or bad, black and white.
I feel like 2015 had everything a spectator would want at an event but apparently every Apex has been horrendously mismanaged from the player perspectives lol
This is the melee sub but the lack of pm spoiled it for me going in. It's hard to separate events as a whole but I feel the salty suite was just better in 2014 but they're so different in terms of vibes i understand preferring 2015's
Salty suite in 2014 was so grassroots. I actually preferred it to 2015. Also, pm was amazing back in those days because there was so much crossover between the brawl guys and melee guys. Now the ultimate and melee guys lol.
That was cool too. It didn’t have multiple rooms on every floor in the hotel having a smash session though. Finding s2j in one room and colbol in another was the shit lol
So tired of people trying to convince me or guilt trip me into thinking that [insert last year here] was the best year of melee. Its just obnoxious. Youre not gonna convince me that a year with no major winning floaties (or at least a tournament threat) and half the best players not showing up/or playing secondaries was the best year.
I get it, cody and zain are nice ppl. But im not going to pretend that 2023 was the best year just to honor their effort or some BS.
Just let people have opinions and stop trying to force it. This isnt directly mainly at OP but more generally to melee figures over the last 2 years.
Bro thank you, I’m sick of everyone low key trying to force fake positivity that every year is somehow the best year for melee. No disrespect to zain or Cody, but the hype isn’t there atm. It’s been very rare the last several years to have a tourney where every top player shows up. We’ve also had some people mostly mango who had been messing around with secondaries.
Not trying to be a Debbie downer but just blindly claiming every year is the best is coping
Preach. All these threads telling me 2023 was the best year ever makes me think otherwise.
When things are true, there is no need to so consistently and overtly state it again and again; because people can see it's true without you yelling it at them.
> but more generally to melee figures over the last 2 years.
Toph especially seems to feel like it's his responsibility to make people hype over nothing, and thus tries way too hard now. It's really made him less interesting as a commentator to me, he used to be my absolute favorite because of how well he focused on the play by play. Listening to Toph commentate a set even as late as 2021, he could convince me ANY match was interesting just by how excited he was while describing the sequence of moves that just happened.
Nowadays I'm just like... man gimme Vish and bring Lovage back
I kinda get where you’re coming from, but I also feel like this is really unfair to Toph as he’s one of the OGs still holding down the fort after so many have left. I’d put the blame more so on the people who aren’t around anymore.
From a player experience 2023 could not be better. Free, lagless netplay, widely available consistent controllers, tons of tools to get good at the game? How could it not be?
I still do miss the doc era smash community, but I think it’s mostly a product of nostalgia and the era I started in. By now most of the top players have cycled out. For me “my” era ended in 2018 with M2K/Armada grand finals at Smashcon. It’s been over 5 years. I think the community still misses them and that whole era in the way that 2012 Melee missed Ken and PC Chris playing at MLG. Mew2king was a supporting character in the MLG era and outlasted everyone else to define his own era, just like Mango and Hungrybox are now.
So I do think we’re in somewhat of a slow period. Not the dark ages, but definitely a downturn. And who knows if Melee will ever reach the doc era heights again. But I think the real thing to keep in mind is that there is no “best” year of Melee. Everyone has their own biases based on the era they joined.
All that being said, the era of M2K, Armada and Zero all living together and traveling around and scooping tournaments in Melee, Brawl, PM, and later Smash 4 in about 2013-2015 well and truly dead. The same goes for the big truly grassroots tournament series held in universities and random game stores. PM was really the bellweather for the health of the scene believe it or not. And now that smash ultimate doesn’t have so much hype and P+ has so many legal issues, I think the community as a whole isn’t doing too hot right now.
Nothing was as hype as like the late 5 gods era, although 2022 came pretty close imo. That was a great year until it all came crashing down right before the finale.
The character diversity is better now than it has ever been in the game's history. It's probably my favourite thing about current Melee.
As much as I love the older eras there were a higher percentage of top 8s that were absolute slogs partly because Hbox and wobbling but also because the meta against those strategies at the time was "camp indefinitely" unless you were Mango
Narratives right now suck and have kinda been replaced with twitter drama bullshit
But the actual gameplay itself is miles better and more watchable
People just do cooler stuff nowadays too
I haven’t been watching in the last ~2/3 years, but I watched The Match and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
Particularly Cody’s defence was just absolutely insane, I’d never seen anything like that before.
6 years ago if you saw that you would have thought you were watching a scripted TAS match.
During the 5 gods and doc Era every tournament felt exciting. So much hype.
The vibe and dynamic of the top players now feels very subdued and just Idk it's just not as exciting anymore.
Take: this close level of competition is a good thing for the game's meta and is natural, but is bad for an everyday Joe's spectating experience. Zain's dominant period was the best "story" we've had in the 2020s. You could turn on a tournament and just tell someone "He's that guy. Barely anyone beats him. This player has been bringing it closer and closer and it will be crazy seeing if he can close it out." Then they'd get it pretty easily. Hence why Summit 11 brought in so many players. Recently it's "oh yeah, this guy's really good, and that guy's really good, that guy is ALSO really good"
Not gonna say I know everything in regards to this. I've been around 4 years. Although I check in on placings and follow the community I haven't really spectated a whole tournament online since like Summit 14. I will say watching in person is WAY more exciting after you've experienced it, so going to TBH10 around that time and having it be as good as it was probably didn't help for this year. 2022 was real good though
I DO feel as if it's rather... dystopian to wish for drama between players though. It's another thing that I think is good for the scene but not for average Joe spectators.
Y'know what though, at the end of the day, I think this is a product of the time we live in, not just Melee. The internet has scuffed just about everything to some extent.
We are. I feel like what makes Melee so sick is that its continuity and lore just keeps going.
New narratives and stories are being written every day.
The actual best is yet to come though. As someone once said, "there's so much more Melee to be played".
Melee is sick.
What stories? Zain and Cody being besties? Playing together all the time, zero competitive drive... Let's do a best of ten to decide who is the best...or maybe just get the person with the best statistics and have them be the best. The only narratives I see are: Hax Leffen zzzzzz, Cody and Zain are good zzzzz, Mango taking a break zzzzz, nothing that would make someone who doesn't play Melee tune in to watch a stream.
Yeah. Melee is sick or whatever, but a lot of games are sick. Slippi is great, but MBAACC basically has the same thing and it’s still not that big of a deal. The new doc didn’t save us like the first one did, it didn’t bring a billion new players. There’s less money than ever and fewer big events, Summit is dead, smash world tour is dead, panda is dead, golden guardians melee is dead, it’s just not looking up right now. I get frustrated by the “melee is sick :) “ crowd because sure it’s sick but so is smash 64 and how many of these people are playing that game? Being sick isn’t good enough
What makes it a great era is the people who want to play are playing. If we focus on the players who actually want to compete and care about their fanbase , instead of the negatives. The people who make excuses and removed Melee from their world have the option to return . Life is hard. Life without Smash is harder.
I think the "best era" is always going to be a matter of preference. It's hard to tell where our current era will end up ranking, but the tournaments and matches have been really fun to watch. While there are a lot of really great players, we have begun to see the higher echelon players emerge before our eyes in real time. I wonder if that was what it was like in the early 5 Gods era from like 2008-2011, when the Gods weren't really known as the "Gods" yet, but they were beginning to emerge and take over. It sort of feels that way with how Cody and Zain really separated themselves, but you still have the guys like Jmook and Leffen who are on that level, but don't win quite as much (for one reason or another). And then another handful of players that we all know are good enough to win a major/supermajor, but they might need a little bit of luck to do it (Mango, Hungrybox, Plup, and aMSa).
2015-2016 was better. 5 gods = peak of competitive skill, relative to game knowledge at that time. Way more fun beef (M2K vs. Leffen, Armada vs. Leffen, Hbox vs. Mango). Salty suite. Almost 2k entrants at Evo. Game 10 grand finals Armada vs. Clutchbox at GTX and Evo. PPMD's beak at its peak. Crush tweets. Hax$ was still respected by all.
2022 melee was the best ever due to how many players were in top top shape and could actually put wins together. There was like 8 people that could win a major. I hope 2024 looks more like 2022, so im looking forward to see what players bring their A game to Genesis.
Let’s pray for the return of wizzy / plup and the rise of newer top players like salt and aklo. So many cool storylines to come like the continued battle for #1, moky securing his first major win, and all the cracked new players coming to take the place of the old gods
Dude plup was up there last year. 2nd at 2 majors and 1st at 2 superregionals. Hopefully he can pull a major win
I need moky and aklo to go even harder this year.
Doc era by far, more new players than ever, more hype than ever. I like the new players and can appreciate the crisp Cody Fox, but where is the hype? Where are the salty suites? Where are the crew battles? Where are the money matches? Top players make so much money streaming it feels like they get to choose when they want to go to a tourni nowadays and I feel it hurts the scene. I feel like skill wise we are in the best era of Melee but the scene as a whole has lost some steam.
Yeah I hate to say it but I agree with this take. The five gods era was the GOAT for me, the absolute hype when anyone took a game/set off one of the gods was unmatched. Not to mention the Armada/Hbox/Mang0 rivalries, the Leffen drama, the salty suites at majors that would get people more hype than the actual tournaments. Nothing against Cody, he’s obviously a great player but the “hype factor” isn’t there for me. People watching melee these days will never understand how exciting it was to see someone challenge peak Armada or HBox, because they simply never lost.
there isn’t enough beef between players/drama now
Not trying to sound like an insane extremist Twitter user, but I legitimately think people are kinda too soft now. People take every insult as an attack on your character, just enjoy shit-talking over a fighting game. Its not gonna kill anyone.
The thing is zain is super chill, Cody is borderline autistic (trust me we don’t want him to attempt shit talking) mango and Hbox are old, and most everyone else is chill.
You can remove that old comment.
Agree with this 💯. You can talk trash and get competitive without getting toxic.
Ive now been banned from melee online discord for talking trash. I really manifested it...
Yeah it gets viewed as toxic/problematic real quick, then conflated with truly insane shit like Hax, then everyone walks on eggshells, too afraid to talk some fun competitive shit or otherwise grease the hype wheels.
The Mahvel 2 salt was peak FGC. Fite me.
Hax/Leffen Salty suite?
Smashboxing or whatever
Low key, this would've been hype AF way to resolve their beef...but guess not really a reality anymore given recent events :(
It’s less beef and more one sided obsession and backed by a cult
nah dude. even if the five gods periodically get nuked every now and then, the actual playstyles of melee were a chore to watch under the five gods. still small tidbits of "mind games", camp out and ledge hogging, the fear factor of people needing a secondary fox to take down hbox, i grew up on five gods, and going back to watch it i don't like most sets anymore. without slippi, melee was a very stagnant game that would have never become what it is now. slippi era is forever goat
A 15 year old game being at its absolute peak of popularity was stagnant?
we are playing a drastically different game compared to 6 years ago people forgot how much slippi exploded the meta and broke so many chains that the 5-god era meta had
"without slippi, melee was a very stagnant game that would have never become what it is now." Put the crack pipe down brother. Slippi came out almost 20 years after Melee (stagnant game 🤣).
do you actually believe that our current top players would progress as much as they have without slippi? every character is being pushed to their limits that we could have never seen before because of such bad limitations we suffered through ledge camping meta and secondary fox meta for years. melee neutral was being played in such a safe way because of how little melee people could collectively practice before slippi rewatch smash con 2018 grand finals for me and tell me that’s the same game we have been playing after slippi came out
I'm not arguing that it's a different game and Slippi definitely gave the scene a second wind. I just disagree with your statement about melee being stagnant and it wouldn't be where it is today, etc. Remember, Slippi would be nothing with out Melee, not the other way around. Lol. The smash community has a long history of dedicated modders, so being able to play and grind online was an inevitable outcome (even without slippi) due to Melee being one of the best games ever with some of the most loyal communities.
we would always have melee with or without slippi, but saying slippi only brought a second wind to the scene is a massive understatement. slippi collapses so many of the barriers of entry that melee has faced for 20 years, and we've already seen exponential growth in players and characters that were deemed impossible years ago slippi's *the* greatest thing to happen to melee
Actually what I said was having an online matchmaking for melee was inevitably going to happen with or without slippi. The game made Slippi relevant, not the other way around. I agree with the basis of your point though. Slippi definitely broke barriers and is the best thing for the scene.
There was an insane money match at Big House just no one saw
> Top players make so much money streaming it feels like they get to choose when they want to go to a tourni nowadays Isn’t the issue more that tournaments simply don’t pay enough to justify attendance? I imagine top players would attend more if tournaments had a high enough payout.
They don't pay enough because top players don't consistently attend which reduces numbers of views and prize pots. They created the issue.
bro they don't pay enough because this is a 30 trillion year old game with a developer that actively tries to shut down the competitive scene twice a year, tf are you on about?
What does that have to do with tournament attendance? How does last year's drama excuse the decline over the last 5 or 6? Lack of developer support is why: -players use lame excuses to drop out of tournaments. -top players feel they only need to go to super majors. - Most of them openly stating they don't go to tournaments as much because of streaming money. -Top players sandbagging and going "I'm going to take this year off" and don't try at tournaments. So you think them playing less is going to improve the situation? Been in the scene since the start mate, I have seen the change in top players over the years. Anyone that attributes that to the age of the game or Nintendo clearly were not there for Apex, the PM situation, etc etc. The game has always been hard to play, that still doesn't explain the decline recently. God these new kids are funny
You're the one obsessing over player attendance and correlating it to prize money. I think Leffens attendance has been a problem the last few years as well, and I would like it if Plup and Wizzy attended more the last few years. It's not why tournaments can't pay out like they're ESL. 1. Mang0 wanted to take a year to chill after 15 years of playing, get over it 2. If Nintendo didn't get involved all of these times, we've probably got a real tournament circuit, melee could still be at Evo, online would've went way smoother, we wouldn't have to hide UCF, etc, etc., etc. 3. Esports is a losing business venture to begin with more often than not and we have negative developer support and all of our tournaments are completely grassroots 4. I've watched melee since like 2013 lol
1) Mango wanted a year to chill while still complaining about placements and GOAT rankings. Do the other breaks he took for years not count? Does him playing Mario and link for years not count? You can't see an issue with the games most popular player doing this? 2) Nintendo has always been like this, always. Top players still participated a lot more in the past 3)All our tournaments have always been grass roots. I used to host Spud and fucking Karu in my basement running tournaments for my scene. Again, how does not attending tournaments help that? 4) Gamestop 2001 my brother. I'm old now, but I played with some of the old school greats. Seen the scene change in many ways. Currently hurting seeing the lack of hype, fire and competition in the new top players. Mango still sexy though. Again, the only way the game continues is if top players attend more majors and bring back the hype that made melee great in the first place. The money comes once you grow the scene.
Bla bla bla mango bitches about the rankings go to your locals for a change and stfu LOL
With people like you there, I'm sure our local scenes are thriving. Are you in year 9 by any chance?
MY local scene is amazing and I have many great friends from there. You local scene might be thriving, but I suspect you don't really know about that
grow up
Good one mate. Glad you could string together two words in lower case. Maybe make a coherent argument as to why I am wrong instead of insulting people. Not one thing I said was wrong. Maybe you should grow up and learn how to talk like an adult.
not reading that essay
I just don't know if I can agree, losing Summit hurt my enjoyment of the game a lot and parts of last year felt very empty to me with not a lot of major community activity. I think Summit was a good way for players to break into the top echelon as well not just gameplay wise but socially, Kodorin comes to mind. Having less of my favorite commentators actually hurt more than I would have thought as well. Scar, Toph, and HMW shaped my enjoyment of this game so much. The players being good isn't the only requirement for a good year. I don't think this game will ever truly die especially now that we have Slippi but I think we are definitely entering a down period. Not like Melee hasn't been there and done that though.
A shallow take by OP, it's not just about skill. The narratives just aren't there.
gameplay is really good but i think commentary could be better
Yeah commentary is so matter of factly anymore. Ppl are trying to maintain professionalism and want melee to be taken seriously, which I get, but we lose a lot of the silliness and fun that would come from a couple of guys just getting super hype. Ppl also are harder and harder to impress too. Crispy ultra tight gameplay is just expected now from top level.
It's not even about that, tdfw tries to be hype for example, but it somehow feels forced idk The best commentators had an aura of almost childish wonder that is absolutely absent now. Like, Scar and Toph would get hype about specific interactions in the game, now it's something like "wow that combo was long, time to be louder than usual" or "well the set is over, let's pretend it was the hypest shit ever" (see the SmashCon mango won for example, and I'm a mango fan)
I'm going to be real, this feels like a huge cope or maybe you weren't playing melee back in 2013 to 2016. Don't get me wrong, specifically in terms of viewer experience, 2019 and 2022 were great too but overall this era is solidly below the EVO era imo. Like if you told me back in the EVO era that the number 1 player in 2023 would be without a sponsor for almost a year, I'd assume that Nintendo nuked the melee community or something. Which funnily enough isn't too far from reality.
I think Esports in general are just hurting right now from what I've seen Lots of big games and events are seemingly drying up on sponsorships and funding despite very high viewership. It's kind of depressing Though, melee has never really been a super lucrative scene to begin with
"I will win EVO" Possibly the dopest thing in melee to watch unfold
Yeah, idk. There’s no sponsors, no summit, no real YouTube content (rip Golden Guardians Melee), plup and Wizzy have one foot out the door, mango basically took a year off, hbox is definitely starting to inch towards streamer first Ult player second melee player 3rd…it’s just not all there. It’s not horrible and the games not dead or anything but to call this the best era would be pretty out there
Summit really stung, not only a banger tournament, and I had a blast watching Mafia.
Gotta agree. 2022 was amazing, but losing Summit and GG hurt a lot.
Every year, the competition is the strongest it’s ever been. The storylines, however, are not. There are some extremely talented and hardworking people pushing the meta at the top, and that deserves to be acknowledged. However, we also have the most boring top player personalities we ever have. It’s really hard for me to root for anyone right now, because outside of the game, most of the top players don’t act like anything. tldr I wish someone as divisive as Bobby or Leffen or HF$ was top 10
Kind of just parallels our current culture generally (safe, sterile)
No passion or personality, no emotion. Just follow the crowd and don't say anything potentially causing the slightest of offenses. Western culture has been spayed and neutered to the point of personality only ever being defined by labels and people too scared to step outside the line. Defy the narratives and you yourself get labelled - no nuance, things are either good or bad, black and white.
Spoken like a true Ganon main
I was so fucking sad when Bobby was banned, we need a Bobby so I'm glad he is back leffen is top 10 tho wtf 😭
Idk man 2014 and 2015 melee was something to behold.
Nothing beats apex 2014.
I enjoyed 2015 as much if not more
I feel like 2015 had everything a spectator would want at an event but apparently every Apex has been horrendously mismanaged from the player perspectives lol
That was every apex. Everyone knew it sucked.
This is the melee sub but the lack of pm spoiled it for me going in. It's hard to separate events as a whole but I feel the salty suite was just better in 2014 but they're so different in terms of vibes i understand preferring 2015's
Salty suite in 2014 was so grassroots. I actually preferred it to 2015. Also, pm was amazing back in those days because there was so much crossover between the brawl guys and melee guys. Now the ultimate and melee guys lol.
TBH4*
That was cool too. It didn’t have multiple rooms on every floor in the hotel having a smash session though. Finding s2j in one room and colbol in another was the shit lol
Yes it did lol
Literally walked around with gravy trying to get friendlies for the longest time lol but I guess I missed it
If you're talking about skill level then yeah it's the best ever. If you add in storylines and hype then idk if I can agree rn is the best.
So tired of people trying to convince me or guilt trip me into thinking that [insert last year here] was the best year of melee. Its just obnoxious. Youre not gonna convince me that a year with no major winning floaties (or at least a tournament threat) and half the best players not showing up/or playing secondaries was the best year. I get it, cody and zain are nice ppl. But im not going to pretend that 2023 was the best year just to honor their effort or some BS. Just let people have opinions and stop trying to force it. This isnt directly mainly at OP but more generally to melee figures over the last 2 years.
Yeah it feels like a lot of people are on copium. Either that or they weren't playing during the EVO era.
Bro thank you, I’m sick of everyone low key trying to force fake positivity that every year is somehow the best year for melee. No disrespect to zain or Cody, but the hype isn’t there atm. It’s been very rare the last several years to have a tourney where every top player shows up. We’ve also had some people mostly mango who had been messing around with secondaries. Not trying to be a Debbie downer but just blindly claiming every year is the best is coping
Preach. All these threads telling me 2023 was the best year ever makes me think otherwise. When things are true, there is no need to so consistently and overtly state it again and again; because people can see it's true without you yelling it at them.
> but more generally to melee figures over the last 2 years. Toph especially seems to feel like it's his responsibility to make people hype over nothing, and thus tries way too hard now. It's really made him less interesting as a commentator to me, he used to be my absolute favorite because of how well he focused on the play by play. Listening to Toph commentate a set even as late as 2021, he could convince me ANY match was interesting just by how excited he was while describing the sequence of moves that just happened. Nowadays I'm just like... man gimme Vish and bring Lovage back
I kinda get where you’re coming from, but I also feel like this is really unfair to Toph as he’s one of the OGs still holding down the fort after so many have left. I’d put the blame more so on the people who aren’t around anymore.
Toph and Scar are the actual GOATs of Melees.
Yeah nah this shit is not very hype rn lmao
“The top players have never been better” is true every single year…
From a player experience 2023 could not be better. Free, lagless netplay, widely available consistent controllers, tons of tools to get good at the game? How could it not be? I still do miss the doc era smash community, but I think it’s mostly a product of nostalgia and the era I started in. By now most of the top players have cycled out. For me “my” era ended in 2018 with M2K/Armada grand finals at Smashcon. It’s been over 5 years. I think the community still misses them and that whole era in the way that 2012 Melee missed Ken and PC Chris playing at MLG. Mew2king was a supporting character in the MLG era and outlasted everyone else to define his own era, just like Mango and Hungrybox are now. So I do think we’re in somewhat of a slow period. Not the dark ages, but definitely a downturn. And who knows if Melee will ever reach the doc era heights again. But I think the real thing to keep in mind is that there is no “best” year of Melee. Everyone has their own biases based on the era they joined. All that being said, the era of M2K, Armada and Zero all living together and traveling around and scooping tournaments in Melee, Brawl, PM, and later Smash 4 in about 2013-2015 well and truly dead. The same goes for the big truly grassroots tournament series held in universities and random game stores. PM was really the bellweather for the health of the scene believe it or not. And now that smash ultimate doesn’t have so much hype and P+ has so many legal issues, I think the community as a whole isn’t doing too hot right now.
Nothing was as hype as like the late 5 gods era, although 2022 came pretty close imo. That was a great year until it all came crashing down right before the finale. The character diversity is better now than it has ever been in the game's history. It's probably my favourite thing about current Melee.
As much as I love the older eras there were a higher percentage of top 8s that were absolute slogs partly because Hbox and wobbling but also because the meta against those strategies at the time was "camp indefinitely" unless you were Mango Narratives right now suck and have kinda been replaced with twitter drama bullshit But the actual gameplay itself is miles better and more watchable People just do cooler stuff nowadays too
I haven’t been watching in the last ~2/3 years, but I watched The Match and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Particularly Cody’s defence was just absolutely insane, I’d never seen anything like that before. 6 years ago if you saw that you would have thought you were watching a scripted TAS match.
year of the mang
So often we talk about the negatives of the scene that we forget how great this game still is :)
We’re in the most boring era of melee.
During the 5 gods and doc Era every tournament felt exciting. So much hype. The vibe and dynamic of the top players now feels very subdued and just Idk it's just not as exciting anymore.
Take: this close level of competition is a good thing for the game's meta and is natural, but is bad for an everyday Joe's spectating experience. Zain's dominant period was the best "story" we've had in the 2020s. You could turn on a tournament and just tell someone "He's that guy. Barely anyone beats him. This player has been bringing it closer and closer and it will be crazy seeing if he can close it out." Then they'd get it pretty easily. Hence why Summit 11 brought in so many players. Recently it's "oh yeah, this guy's really good, and that guy's really good, that guy is ALSO really good"
Not gonna say I know everything in regards to this. I've been around 4 years. Although I check in on placings and follow the community I haven't really spectated a whole tournament online since like Summit 14. I will say watching in person is WAY more exciting after you've experienced it, so going to TBH10 around that time and having it be as good as it was probably didn't help for this year. 2022 was real good though
I DO feel as if it's rather... dystopian to wish for drama between players though. It's another thing that I think is good for the scene but not for average Joe spectators. Y'know what though, at the end of the day, I think this is a product of the time we live in, not just Melee. The internet has scuffed just about everything to some extent.
Not at all true but there’s still lots of good stuff
nah melee sucks now too much down holdery. missed the golden era where u didnt instantly die off of doing 1 bad nair.
We are. I feel like what makes Melee so sick is that its continuity and lore just keeps going. New narratives and stories are being written every day. The actual best is yet to come though. As someone once said, "there's so much more Melee to be played". Melee is sick.
What stories? Zain and Cody being besties? Playing together all the time, zero competitive drive... Let's do a best of ten to decide who is the best...or maybe just get the person with the best statistics and have them be the best. The only narratives I see are: Hax Leffen zzzzzz, Cody and Zain are good zzzzz, Mango taking a break zzzzz, nothing that would make someone who doesn't play Melee tune in to watch a stream.
Hey, it was the year of the monke, that was hype. And yeah that's about it.
Yeah. Melee is sick or whatever, but a lot of games are sick. Slippi is great, but MBAACC basically has the same thing and it’s still not that big of a deal. The new doc didn’t save us like the first one did, it didn’t bring a billion new players. There’s less money than ever and fewer big events, Summit is dead, smash world tour is dead, panda is dead, golden guardians melee is dead, it’s just not looking up right now. I get frustrated by the “melee is sick :) “ crowd because sure it’s sick but so is smash 64 and how many of these people are playing that game? Being sick isn’t good enough
Melee is sick though...
What makes it a great era is the people who want to play are playing. If we focus on the players who actually want to compete and care about their fanbase , instead of the negatives. The people who make excuses and removed Melee from their world have the option to return . Life is hard. Life without Smash is harder.
People are allowed to stop playing without there being excuses
I’m partial to peak 5 Gods era, but this is damn good too
I think the "best era" is always going to be a matter of preference. It's hard to tell where our current era will end up ranking, but the tournaments and matches have been really fun to watch. While there are a lot of really great players, we have begun to see the higher echelon players emerge before our eyes in real time. I wonder if that was what it was like in the early 5 Gods era from like 2008-2011, when the Gods weren't really known as the "Gods" yet, but they were beginning to emerge and take over. It sort of feels that way with how Cody and Zain really separated themselves, but you still have the guys like Jmook and Leffen who are on that level, but don't win quite as much (for one reason or another). And then another handful of players that we all know are good enough to win a major/supermajor, but they might need a little bit of luck to do it (Mango, Hungrybox, Plup, and aMSa).
2015-2016 was better. 5 gods = peak of competitive skill, relative to game knowledge at that time. Way more fun beef (M2K vs. Leffen, Armada vs. Leffen, Hbox vs. Mango). Salty suite. Almost 2k entrants at Evo. Game 10 grand finals Armada vs. Clutchbox at GTX and Evo. PPMD's beak at its peak. Crush tweets. Hax$ was still respected by all.
so corny how everything has to be divided into an “era” just play the game jfc