After some further discussion with Thinkaman, we concluded a lot of things that I am reporting here for transparency.
Sonic's new dtilt is indeed awesome. Thinkaman suggested slightly sharpening the angle to help Sonic chase in situations involving smart SDI or the more difficult characters (such as Luigi). It might also make the move a bit more natural as percentages get higher. It's being investigated.
Jigglypuff dair is apparently hilarious but transparently overpowered on a casual inspection by his Jigglypuff main sensibilities. He says he's going to be doing testing with shield damage set to 2 (I have it set to 3 in the current test build). To be clear, 2 means 200% of the normal shield damage while 3 means 250%.
I actually just completely ruined Lucas in the test build by significantly nerfing his dair and making his dtilt borderline worthless (at least against Sonic, who was Thinkaman's test victim). Sorry about that, but there was some serious confusion about talking about standard Brawl's version of those moves which is different from the first standard Balanced Brawl release and the test build. Changes are being reverted to the original Balanced Brawl release on this one (which is different from standard Brawl, mind you). Thinkaman is also apparently playing with the SDI values on dair in Lucas's favor; I fear for us all. Oh well, at least it was just a test version in which I made such mistakes.
Our operating plan for grab release business uses an ugly word... homogenization. The Balanced Brawl status quo sets typical ground breaks at something like 22 or 23 frames and jump breaks at something like 20 frames while leaving releasing at 30 frames, making grab release generally unsafe. However, the uniqueness of Bowser, DK, and Ness/Lucas is preserved. Bowser still has token frame advantage on his releases (and useable frame advantage against Ness/Lucas), DK has an even faster ground break than everyone else (also a special change to his releasing animation to make it so he doesn't get punished for broken cargo carries), and Ness/Lucas are usually frame neutral with people. The homogenization plan sets everything to 30 frames for frame neutrality, though we do intend to leave DK's faster ground break in. This is an undeniable but ultimately slight nerf to Bowser and a very, very slight buff to Ness and Lucas (only really matters in the Bowser matchup). No, Bowser keeping his shenanigans is not an option. This does improve most grab release situations from the first release since grab releases are now just always frame neutral (DK can still punish you if you let him ground break on you!). Frame neutral is generally not really that great, only getting an extra pummel or two in exchange for frame neutral when you could do even more damage and get better position from a throw is questionable. However, some people do use it for frame traps to trick people into regrabs; be my guest really.
Rocket PSIence's jab lock thing has entered committee, so to speak. I investigated it on my own and, despite serious misgivings looking at it in PSA, in-game it appears to be mechanically sound. I was unable to create situations where the variable wasn't clearing, but I suspect I wasn't really trying hard enough (I just have this strong feeling there's some corner case that will make it not reset). I sent it off to Thinkaman to investigate on his own (he has access to a Wii again!). I'm not entirely sold on it even being a good idea, to be clear, but it's not an intuitively bad idea either and is receiving very serious consideration. Beyond bug testing to make sure this implementation would work on every character and not cause issues in obscure game modes (you never know what is going to happen with this undocumented and just presumed unused variable!), the balance implications have to be carefully explored. When I'm not accidentally ruining some of Lucas's most important moves, he already has some really solid stuff in Bbrawl, and it's not like he's the only character affected (Link, as an example, has these sorts of situations). Sorry this took so long, but thank you for the contribution. On that note, if you know of any other unused variables, please do let us know. We're going to be needing an unused variable for ledge grab stuff down the road!
Speaking of things that took so long, Lokee's title screen is awesome and definitely going to be used, but I didn't snag a copy of it when I had the chance (the link expired). Thinkaman said he'd take care of it so maybe he's already PM'd about it, but either way, that's the situation and if this is the first thing you see Lokee just rehosting it somewhere and posting as such would be appreciated. To you as well, thank you for your contribution. I really appreciate it.
We have a plan to move forward with Samus, the polarizing character. We're planning on slightly toning down dtilt's kbg (a value in-between standard Brawl and the current BBrawl value) and nerfing tether attack by 1% across the board as nerfs. There appears to be widespread consensus that we made dtilt just too powerful for the type of character Samus is, and we can see the issue (though we aren't going to just make Samus suck again!). As per tether attack, I recognize this is a big nerf, but it is the single most polarizing thing about Samus. I asked Thinkaman for his analysis of how gameplay happens in the Samus vs Ganondorf matchup, and I thought he fell asleep as he posted:
(1:51:06 AM) Thinkaman: ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ
In terms of buffs to Samus though, since she didn't really need flat out nerfing so much as depolarizing, I am going to make her jab link (which will REALLY help her since her jab2 is a great "get off me" move that she basically can't use against grounded opponents now) and fix up her uthrow and dthrow to be more functionally independent.
Having two people doing stuff is so awesome; you guys really have no idea... I feel bad announcing his departure as such. We, of course, also had PSA related science such as:
(2:45:40 AM) Thinkaman: I can't decide what is more awesome
(2:45:51 AM) Thinkaman: seeing falcon punch have super armor, or seeing knee auto-kill shields
(2:45:55 AM) Thinkaman: both are pretty amazing
(later, I one upped him by having Wario turn into Warioman on every sidestep)
So yeah, things are good, and there was more, but that's just going to have to remain a surprise until later.
