I know what they’re trying to say and to a certain extent I agree, but implying that people only play a handful of chars in SSFIV is just wrong.
And even in games like CvS2 and A3, most players just whore the top tiers at tournaments anyway.
I dunno, it’s just feels like SSFIV is devoid of anything like say, Mag’s ROM which suddenly breaks the character out and moves them up. It’s like the devs were so afraid of players finding out shizz that they put in so many limits.
I think a lot of the character representation in tournaments for 3s and Marvel has a lot to do with people who just don’t want to put in the time to REALLY learn the game. Look at the Japanese when it comes to 3s. You have people like Kuroda beasting folks with Q. That dude’s put in a lot of time and I think if more players put in the time he has, the character rep would be a lot different. In 3s anyway.
And what I mean by “relative balance” is balance that isn’t terribly out of whack, but isn’t so balanced that the game’s boring. Think somewhere between Mighty Morphin Power Rangers and Marvel Super Heroes. 
Relative balance means exactly what it says.
The relative balance of games influences matchup numbers.
In a very balanced games 6-4 does not mean the same thing as in a very unbalanced game.
The further away from 5-5 you go the less true this is.
Failing to give every character something interesting to abuse is exactly what SSF4 did and it does not have anything to do character options. To illustrate this let’s compare it to a game that excels at abuseable things but also is extremely unbalanced: Super Turbo.
The reason for this is that giving a character something highly abuseable such as T-Hawk option select throws, Ochio Loop, Dictator ToD and so forth allows the character to be unique and dangerous despite having simply worse options compared to better character.
Indulge me in an oversimplified comparison between Ken and Ryu.
Comparing their matchups there is very little reason to pick Ken over Ryu. Ryu has better options in his normals and more solid specials. What Ken has is a kneebash throw that setups further mixups that can potentionally instantly end a round. This makes him unique and different from Ryu in an interesting and abuseable way. (Ken has other advantages aswell but i am oversimplifing things)
Now make the same comparison between SSF4 Ryu and Ken or most other similar characters. They lack that abuseable difference.
Sure they might do more damage or have a different mixup but there is not something solely unique to them that makes them a real threat. That is why i consider SSF4 a failure in this regard.
If anything, I think that’s what makes games less interesting, homogenizing everything into big chain/custom combos for everybody, or big easy to do magic series/OTG/hyper combos in MvC3.
But the point is, the match is still interesting because, at the very least, everyone has that option to bust out and win. It’s like high-stakes power, everyone has the option to risk it all and go all in.
I can see that, but for me, it just makes all the match-ups and characters run together, and they lose a bit of their individuality.
Its like SF4’s way of balance was like giving everybody a different kind of gun, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. Looking at them, they don’t seem very powerful, but they all work together with each other, no one weapon is crazily stronger than anyone else(although the bottom tier guys only get pistols, so they got work extra hard).
Where in something like MvC3, they gave everybody a big ass shotgun. Some have longer range, some have shorter reload time, but they all get up in your face and they all do crazy ass damage and anybody can beat anybody because whoever gets hit first is in a big hole(except Thor, who was given a pistol).
I don’t think one is inherently better than the other, but I prefer SF4’s way of doing things, even at the cost of broken wackiness.
But the thing is, in SSF4 why would ANYBODY bother picking the low tier outside of low tier whoring players, when chances are there’s a higher tier character with a similar playstyle with far better options.
Now if the low tier characters had ANY sort of mechanic that really gave them a fighting chance and made them fun to play against the characters that flat out are better than them, it’d be cool, but none of them do so it’s boring to play as them because you know that if you play a normal playstyle against a high tier character chances are 90% of your shit is getting beat out.
Probably the same reasons Uryo plays Sakura in SSF4, or Ed Ma plays Juri, or Bullcat plays Gouken or whatever: They simply like the character enough to learn them inside out, know the match-ups, live with their weaknesses and focus on the strengths they have available to them. The cards might be stacked against you, but one smart play from Gouken can lead right into a free Ultra, for example.
That isn’t even true, if anything MvC3 has a better balance of playstyles compared to SFIV. We have rushdown, keepaway/turtle, lockdown and touch of death which is more than in SFIV which is heavily biased towards defensive play. The is even more true when you consider that different teams play differently despite having the some of the same characters. The right team can deal as much damage by locking their opponent down on one end of the screen as say a different team that relies on getting up close and hitting big combos.
Still, those characters have little in the way of dangerous options. Compare to say, MvC2 Ken. While he might not even be in the upper tiers, he’s still deadly. Once he gets his tatsu infinite in, he can pretty much take out your entire team.
Another thing, a lower tier character can, once the metagame starts evolving with those options, move up thanks to relative balance. Look at Makoto in 3S. Early on she wasn’t considered top tier. Then, people found out how to combo into SA2, once people combined that with her high damage of normals and she eventually moved up into the top tiers.
So is that a “wasted space” issue, where some characters are just too mediocre to warrant any consistent use? Or are there people out there who think their favourite character has been downgraded for balancing, and subsequently suck for it? I agree with Deathreaper on the first bit. If you want to play unique characters, be prepared to practice hard. And if you still suck then dont complain about it, just choose somebody else. Your Gun analogy is kinda wack though lol. MVC3 naturally involves a lot more aggression, compared to SF which is more about control (d3v, i managed to pick that much up in my few hours of play on SF4, also a lot of my SF experience comes from Alpha). Shotguns and pistols dont really explain what’s going on.
on a side note-
I have been wondering for a while now why capcom has not made a point of CLEARLY differentiating between Ryu, Ken and Akuma. Their “predictable clone” characters (not my words lol) have been what most of the haters usually complain about. Not that the haters really matter, but from a general standpoint I would think “Unique Characters” is a pretty good selling point for a fighter. The characters already have different playstyles, but their movesets still all seem the same(specials). Not a big priority for Cappy?
Characters are only wasted space if the players aren’t able to develop them enough to make them competitive. This is something that’s easier to do in a game with “relative balance.”
Look at my previous example of 3S Makoto, used to be mid-low tier until people learned how to combo into her SA2 and began her touch of death shenanigans. Better yet, look at MvC2. Mags wasn’t god tier until the ROM infinite (and Psylocke assist). Then, there’s the fact that certain other characters haven’t been fully explored yet, meaning that given enough time, people may find things that bring them to top or even god tier.
lol, i wonder what the extent of those discoveries will be. Cuz it could mean that tiers are only effective as long as certain characters never reach their full potential. Bringing us back to what Deathreaper said about practice. Im naturally inclined to the underdog characters so this is pretty good news for me. Leave the god tiers to the gods, I am a foolish mortal!
Haters are a minority. Everybody knows several people who pretty much only play Ryu, Ken and Akuma. There’s something fun about them being as similar as they are. They are all popular characters.
It technically means that tiers only reflect the current state of the metagame and what people know of the characters. If a game is free enough, the possibilities could be almost endless.
Saying relative balance means exactly what it says doesn’t add anything. Relative to what? You said earlier “[matchup] numbers” are relative to the balance of the game itself. I’m still not sure what you’re talking about, if not options.
“giving character something interesting” = options.
Also, you don’t need to give characters abusable shit to make them interesting. T.Hawk’s tick SPD OS isn’t interesting at all. Scary? Yes. But interesting? Wth. I think when you mean interesting you actually mean “strong”. Yes, it would be cool if every character had something that would make the opponent fear them, but unless there are universal mechanics at play (eg. parries, bursts, universal high damage/speed, dial-a-combos or magic series), you are going to get matchups where these traits are going to be less effective. In simple terms, homogenization (of characters, systems or mechanics) lowers the effect that matchups have (on character ability). Another way to do this is to give all characters a million different options, but then you risk creating another VF - a great game that noone plays because most people consider it too difficult.
If you increase the speed/damage of SSFIV, or give everyone a parry, you would have a game where all the characters become “interesting” by your definition.
This sentence alone shows that you have not understood anything i have said.
Homogenisation is the very antithesis of what i have talked about.
The fact that I said that I don’t know what you’re talking about should have told you that I don’t know what you’re talking about…
[edit]
I’ll bite anyway. I get the idea that it’s better if characters have “something” that makes them strong. That’s not a novel or complex idea. What I’m saying that it’s very hard to accomplish this without homogenization of some form.
I assumed that was regarding relative balance considering it was in the same paragraph.
If you admit to not understand what i am talking about then why are you trying to argue with me about it ?
On your edit:
Did you miss my list of examples ?
None of those involve homogenization.
You still haven’t explained what relative balance means…
I’ve already addressed this. In ST everyone can kill in 3 combos or less. That’s one form of homogenization. You just don’t realize it. If everyone in SSFIV could kill in 3 combos or less, by your definition they’d all be interesting.