but see what if the character or characters i want to play as end up as being not good overall or just have alot of bad matchups? should i just quit the game? ive played alot of fighters (good and bad) where my desired archetype (grappler, zoner) is just not good because the designers didnt know how to balance it right or just flat out didnt like how that particular character interacted with the rest of the group. if i played somebody else just so i could compete i wouldnt enjoy the game anymore and just leave later anyway.
You either deal with it, switch your character, or quit. Asking for patches is about the worse thing you can do. Some companies don’t know how to properly balance a game and sometimes patching makes it worse.
E.G. My beloved BBB 1st Impression.
Balance is severely overrated by the community.
I cringe every time I see someone say “This game will be great as long as it’s balanced!”
Don’t be a character loyalist. This is competitive after all. If you say that you don’t play competitively or in tournaments then the balance really shouldn’t affect you.
im not a character loyalist cause that brings too many problems but id be remiss if i didnt say i wasnt an archetype loyalist. what i am saying is a fighting game should NEVER punish the player for playing their desired way with a shitty character. to me thats a shitty fighting game no matter how you look at it.
Again don’t choose that character. If their isn’t a “good” character that fits your archtype of play then dont be an archtype loyalist. Or just don’t play the game. Doesn’t make it shitty, just makes it not suited to your custom abilities.
Complaining about balance in a Capcom game is like going to McDonald’s to complain about how unhealthy the food is. If it really mattered that much to you, you wouldn’t be playing/eating at McCapcom’s in the first place, and any snide joke you make has already been done to death. Contrary to popular belief, you do have other options, and it only makes you look stupid when you come back again and again.
Also, I cringe a little bit every time I see “Zoning” or “Zoning Character.” Of course they look like a zoning character! They’re in a goddamn fighting game! I don’t go to Nascar forums and make obvious speculations like, “This guy seems like a left-turning driver.”
HAV had something good to say about balance a while ago:
From someone who just said “diversity >>>>> balance” this is a very strange point. If a number of different archetypes can’t compete at a high level in what sense can the game be said to be ‘diverse’?
Because going for balance more often than not ruins that diversity in the first place. Look at VSav, arguably the most balanced game Capcom’s ever made. However, alot of folks will point out that every character in that game ends up playing some variation of rush down, even zoning characters from the previous games.
but if a number of different character types can’t compete at a high level the point that “going for balance ruins diversity” is moot anyway. you end up with the same result either way; only couple of viable play styles.
calling for character balance while not caring how those characters play (aka the “i want to pick my favourite anime” argument) is stupid, but it’s not unreasonable to make the far more subtle request that a number of different play styles be viable at a high level.
Love that the guy posting this is named LordxMugen.
Sorry in advance, because most of this post is hearsay.
I think HAV’s points mostly count toward the American scene, mostly. From what I can tell by this thread, the more popular games in Japan, with a few notable exceptions tend to be extremely balanced and allow for great character diversity. From what I’ve been told, the reason Marvel didn’t take off over there was because of the lack of viable characters. I’ve never verified whether or not that is true, but I thought it bore repeating.
I also think that different game scenes tend to approach matchups a different way. For example, I remember a huge debate over on 8 Way Run forums about whether or not Algol should be banned. It was argued that Algol basically made some characters (Talim, for example), completely ineffective. The SC engine is not equipped to deal with projectile spam, and Talim especially had no options for getting around it. A few people who were cross-players for SF actually argued, “there are ‘unwinnable’ matchups in Street Fighter all the time, so what’s the big deal?” The SC players typically responded with: “this isn’t Street Fighter.”
Personally, I lean in favor of most matchups being no worse than 7-3, but in the end it won’t matter. No matter what you do, if a player is competitive enough, they’ll either change characters, stop playing, or suck it up and deal. But, that’s just how competition works and isn’t inherently a good or bad thing. The bottom line is that, unlike most other forms of competition (sports, for example), publishers have to make money from as many people as they can, so keeping a large number of playstyles viable works in their favor and creates bigger pots for serious competition.
That’s just it though. How many people actually understand a game’s balance? Look at arcade edition. A bunch of outcry about Fei Long being unbalanced due to a single interview after the game’s release. Then that shifted to Yun based off of more hearsay. Most of it is just “I saw Daigo/Tokido/Justin do this, that’s unbalanced.” Then one day after AE comes out on consoles, there’s assine posts like some guy saying Yun isn’t a problem because he’s beaten 6 in a row with his Juri *online. *Tier lists are based off of the highest level of play, and people act like they fight tournament level wolverine, phoenixes, yuns whatever everyday. The truth is that they probably haven’t even learned their main character’s bnb combos.
If your arguing in favor of public relations patches, like the ones in mvc3, rather than actual balance patches, then I can see that happening. Fickle patches for fickle players.
I don’t agree with the “tier lists are based off the highest level of play” thing. Never have. Tiers are essentially what practical tools a character has for specific scenarios. If Character A has X anti-air move which is 5 frames and Character B has Y anti-air move which is 3 frames, but the two characters otherwise have identical attributes, then Character B is objectively better. (Now, realistically, the only time I’ve actually seen that scenario is custom characters in SCIV, some of whom were identical to their templates except with a slightly smaller/larger hitbox or something.) Yeah, more often than not, the only time tiers will matter is when two top-level competitors are facing each other, but I’ve always found the argument that tiers “only matter at highest level” to be like saying “Carbine vs Musket only matters in Special Ops”.
And honestly, I’m not arguing in favor of or against patches. To me, that’s like arguing for or against arcade version 1.23 instead of 1.31. Developers change games as they feel like it. It’s a non-issue.
But anyway, I’m not saying that people bitching about something on Day 1 isn’t stupid. Early tiers really mean nothing, so I usually ignore everybody who whines about an overpowered character or strategy unless it’s truly broken (i.e., Superman’s infinite). That includes the pros who get salty because they lost to mashed Ultras or to a random Phoenix–no one is really going to know how the metagame for a title will develop until it’s been around for a while, and even then, Super Turbo has new crap still being discovered about it. But, once those tiers *do *start settling in the years following the game’s release, I don’t see how how it’s NOT beneficial to have a game where a fundamentally good (not top-level, but fundamentally sound) player wouldn’t be able to put up ANY fight whatsoever against even a high-level player using his worst matchup. He would still have his work cut out for him, but the fight shouldn’t be utterly hopeless.
When it comes to balance, ultimately its up to the developer’s (game designer’s) vision of the game. In the past, maybe the designer has to rely on player feedback to understand how the game is actually played. But these days, with automatic replay saving / statistic gathering / youtube / nesica-live etc, designers can get a good picture of how people play a game at different skill levels etc.
So did the designer of KOF98UM want Krauser to be in every team at high level? Did BBCT’s designer want Tager to have an impossible fight against Nu, are the designers of game X happy that only characters A B and C are viable, are they happy that character Z is played most effectively by only spamming one move, etc etc.
So its not about people complaining (thats just a call for designers to pay attention to an issue), its about how the game evolves in reality, and whether the designers are pleased with the emerging gameplay or not. If they are not pleased, they should fix it. If they think its ok, then fine.
Of course, then we get to talk about what makes a good designer, and in what kinds of situations they should intervene with a patch/sequel vs. when they should leave a game alone.
What constitutes a “practical tool” is totally dependent on the skill of the player though. Even if tier lists work like you describe (and in practice they really don’t, even if that is that is the idea behind them), we still have a judgment to make about what constitutes a “practical tool”, and this is based on the highest level of play. A tier list isn’t equally applicable across all levels of play; 3rd Strike Yun would be a classic example, another would be ST Dictator beating Honda at low-intermediate level but losing at high level.
Btw, here’s some math I didn’t think about until recently
Matchup Advantage: % of opponent’s skill level required to go even
5-5: 100%
6-4: 80%
7-3: 60%
8-2: 40%
9-1: 20%
I think this really puts things in perspective; to go even on a 7-3 you have to be almost twice as good as your opponent. This isn’t really meant to argue any point other than the lazy truism of “skill > tiers” isn’t equally true in all situations.
It is true though that at all but the highest level (where players are most likely working at the upper limits of their abilities), a bad matchup can be overcome through just getting better at the game. Whether an imbalance perceived by a low-level player is still a problem thus depends on your design philosophy. In practice developers want to make money so they’re probably going to address it, but if the imbalance applies exclusively at a low level (think scrubby dudes whining about SF4 Dictator st.RH, or Guile or Dhalsim or whatever) then it’s probably more prudent to give them some idea of what they should be doing against it rather than simply nerfing and messing up a game that was fine at the high level of play.
Which still applies to what I’m saying, though.
Okay, here’s my theory. Feel free to criticize. Where I agree with the idea that “tiers only apply to the highest level” is that the only way to make use of a character’s complete toolset is to be a godlike player in the first place, but when you start putting player skill into the equation, things are automatically going to get nebulous. “Skill” can rise and drop, even at the highest level, during the course of a single match, so it’s not helpful. Take, for example, a theoretical ST match in which a Honda shuts down a Ryu player’s spacing and zoning with perfect approaching, yomied jump-ins, footsies, and command grabs. Again, hypothetically speaking, from the rest of the match onward, that Ryu is mindfucked because he can’t figure out what he’s doing wrong against Honda, whom he should have an advantage against. You might say, “Well duh, the Honda player was obviously more skilled”, but that’s just the rub–what does that even mean?
If both of these players are on the same “skill level”, and tiers only apply at this level, the Ryu player should have won. But the Honda player took some risks, made some gambles and outplayed him early on and now Ryu doesn’t know what to do. According to what you’re saying, the Ryu player’s skill level apparently just dropped, because tiers no longer matter. But if that’s the case, then tiers are worthless in the first place because it doesn’t tell the story of the human element. If players were perfect machines who never had good or bad days or never took crazy risks that paid off, then that would be true, but that isn’t the case. Thus, I find the argument that tiers “only apply at the highest level” to be practically meaningless, because the “highest level” has too many fluctuations in itself.
That’s why I prefer to look at characters as tools, as I used the Carbine vs Musket comparison earlier. There’s a reason why standard-issue weaponry for nearly all modern forces is a semi-automatic rifle. It basically makes any soldier, regardless of raw talent, into a dangerous military unit. Yeah, the guy who can actually aim the gun better or knows how to use cover and flushing tactics will generally have an edge over his opponent, and maybe someone with exceptional aim or tactical skill could put a musket to good use, but regardless of how godlike you are, if you underestimate a mook with a carbine, you’ll end up being shipped home with a flag on your casket.
It’s the same with tiers. Even if you’re a top level 3S player, you have to repect the shit out of Chun-Li’s cr.mk.
So assume two players of the highest skill performing at the best of their abilities? I really don’t see the problem here.
edit:
I mean, this is essentially the same as the old argument that tiers don’t matter because “there’s no such thing as equal skill”. Even if that were true, why does that devalue tier lists?