Ropesnake: yes or no?

[HailCrest]

Many Lucases lament on Lucas' crappy grab game. However, I think it's better than what most people would think.

Picture yourself in this situation: You happen to be standing right next to Sakurai who's working on brawl. He is working on Lucas' data and is torn between a decision, so he asks you, some programmer on the team working on Brawl, for his input. He says:

"Well, I sort of had this idea for Lucas where his rope snake could be his grab, you know? Sets him apart from Ness and all. However, it's a ranged grab so obviously it has to be slow. Not Samus/Zamus slow since it has less range than them, but slow enough for anyone to punish if he misses, like Link/Tink. At the same time, his ropesnake should double as an aerial tether recovery, again setting him apart from Ness. But it's so troublesome to program one whole new object and model into this game and I'm feeling a bit lazy right now, so do you think so?"

You know what the slow grab would do to Lucas' metagame. You know about Lucas' throws that Sakurai had already programmed. The toss up is whether you would rather have a fast grab with good throws or a tether recovery, so what would you say to Sakurai in reply?

(write your answer as if you're really speaking to him)

(translation into Japanese is not required)

I would say:

"Well, I guess it would be kind of good to let Lucas have something that Ness doesn't. I guess you should make the standing grab like, last 50 frames? And make it come out on the 13th frame, since Ness' grab comes out in 8 frames and all. I totally support the tether idea, since it would really help Lucas' recove-- HOLY CRAP 40 FRAME GRAB RELEASE?! WHAT THE HELL HAVE YOU BEEN SMOKING, DUDE?"

 

[Levitas]

lol GR recovery has nothing to do with the rope snake.

And the nice thing about rope snake is that it's excellent at punishing missed moves and some hits on shield.

What, sheik got a downsmash off on your shield? cool, free grab.


I guess I'd be asking about why ropesnake is unique in how it's vulnerable and doesn't hurt the opponents like every other zair >.>

 

[HailCrest]

lol GR recovery has nothing to do with the rope snake.

And the nice thing about rope snake is that it's excellent at punishing missed moves and some hits on shield.

What, sheik got a downsmash off on your shield? cool, free grab.


I guess I'd be asking about why ropesnake is unique in how it's vulnerable and doesn't hurt the opponents like every other zair >.>

meh, i visualized myself looking at Sakurai's computer and noticing the coding for the grab release

i guess because ropesnake is a living thing compared to the other tether zairs... l/tink's grabs are a chain, s/zamus are laser grabs. Ropesnake's an actual living snake (according to mother 3 canon) so i guess it makes sense for it to extend lucas' hurtbox. :x

and i guess it's too much of a ***** to hurt anyone?

 

[rPSIvysaur]

Lucas standing grab is 70 frames IIRC >.>

Pivot Grab is 50

 

[Tokaio]

I would think that if we didn't have a tether grab, then we would move up 1 or 2 spots on the tier list. If a person has one fresh shield, you basically can't do anything at close range. If you Nair, you get punished or shieldgrabbed, same with all the rest of his aerials. At least if you have a non-tether grab, then you can miss a grab without eating a charged smash.
Or if the rope snake actually hit >_>

 

[orange/xd]

Lucas standing grab is 70 frames IIRC >.>

Pivot Grab is 50

o lawd

what about dash grab?

 

[Chuee]

Dash grab has 400 frames of ending lag.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

Dash Grab doesn't end until you get punished. (80 IIRC)

 

[HailCrest]

i was telling sakurai not to make it the sucky 70-frame grab that it is right now

at the very least, our grab is better than zamus's

but seriously

if we didn't have ropesnake, do you think Lucas' recovery would still be the A-tier recovery as it is right now? without double jump, we'd be forced to pk jibaku as our only option. and pkt2 isn't exactly a stellar recovery.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

Is it actually called PK Jibaku where your frome Hailcrest?

 

[HailCrest]

No, but the Japanese official guide (i think the manual that comes with the game) calls it that. ji means self, baku means explosion/destruction so whatever

i call it anywhere from pkt2, to pk jibaku, to pk cannonball. my friends call it pk thunder recovery, pk explosion, and pk that-thing-that-racks-up-more-than-30%-on-me-omgwtf.

but take this to general discussion :x

 

[HelpR]

I'd punch him and ask him why he hates lucas so much.

Lucas will be taken out of brawl, and I'll main metaknight like i intended to before brawl came out.

 

[Galeon]

eh nm, doesnt matter

 

[iLSA]

Ah yes, the ropesnake...

While I find the ropesnake's range and recovery assistance pretty useful, a missed grab is way more trouble than it's worth. I don't grab often because of this, but I think the tether recovery is a nice feature for Lucas (since a badly positioned PK recovery is just asking for a spike... >_<).

In fact, I give the ropesnake a big YES!, not only because it's just another one of those quirks that set the Earthbounds apart but because of the good ol' days of Mother 3.

That was a good game.

Nostalgia ftw.

 

[Yink]

I would think that if we didn't have a tether grab, then we would move up 1 or 2 spots on the tier list. If a person has one fresh shield, you basically can't do anything at close range. If you Nair, you get punished or shieldgrabbed, same with all the rest of his aerials. At least if you have a non-tether grab, then you can miss a grab without eating a charged smash.
Or if the rope snake actually hit >_>

Lucas isn't moving up 1 or 2 spots on the tier list from that. Lucas is bad in general, so is Ness.

I do agree that if it wasn't he'd be better off, and making his zair actually attack would make sense. I mean the snake grabs so it has to "bite" right? Wouldn't biting hurt? >_>;

 

[Attila_]

did anybody else notice that the rope snake is exactly like the one in the Zelda Spirit Tracks game?

but yes, id much rather lucas is he had a proper grab. tethers grabs that arent olimar`s are horrible.

 

[Yink]

did anybody else notice that the rope snake is exactly like the one in the Zelda Spirit Tracks game?

but yes, id much rather lucas is he had a proper grab. tethers grabs that arent olimar`s are horrible.

Mm...yeah the Zelda team likes to steal a lot of things from the MOTHER series. They stole that and they also took the engine that was going to be used for the 3D MOTHER 3. They used it for making Wind Waker instead.

/offtopic, sorry.

 

[iLSA]

Lucas isn't moving up 1 or 2 spots on the tier list from that. Lucas is bad in general, so is Ness.

I do agree that if it wasn't he'd be better off, and making his zair actually attack would make sense. I mean the snake grabs so it has to "bite" right? Wouldn't biting hurt? >_>;

The ropesnake totally should have been made to do at least a little damage. I have no idea why Nintendo chose to have Tink's zair hurt but not Lucas's. I bet that if Brawl had been developed/released after Spirit Tracks (thankfully it wasn't) then there might have been a chance that Tink's grab would have been the snake whip.

Not fair.

 

[Bubbleman_Nsider]

I'll drop my 2 cents on the subject:

The Rope Snake sucks.

At first, I thought "Awesome, Lucas got another recovery besides PK Thunder". Which is true, but even as good and situational a Tether Recovery is, Lucas' suffers several problems:

The Rope Snake's Hit box is a part of Lucas. This means that if the RS is hit, Lucas will also be damaged. This doesn't happens on characters like Link, T.Link, Samus and ZSS since their Tether aren't part of them. Also, it doesn't deals any damage or knock back, like the other characters mentioned before, leaving you "open" or to "mind game" if the opponent doesn't knows this. However, if used in a short hop, it cancels as soon as you land. SH RS to Jab anyone?

Ironic for me to say that it sucks, since I use it a lot to re-grab the ledge, but compared to other Tethers, it sucks.

I won't even mention the grab-related stuff, since it's been posted to death by now.

 

[rPSIvysaur]

They hacked it and took Lucas Rope Snake. Burn your copy of spirit tracks and spit on it now.

 

[iLSA]

They hacked it and took Lucas Rope Snake. Burn your copy of spirit tracks and spit on it now.

Done and done.

 

[briarsauble]

They hacked it and took Lucas Rope Snake. Burn your copy of spirit tracks and spit on it now.

Epic winz.