I agree with the last few posts. Fighting game companies (especially Capcom) have a great history of a few good games and mostly bad ones for the rest. they seem to accidentally fall into making good games. I don’t think they designed 3s or MVC2 to play the way they ended up playing.
given their track record, why would you want them balancing the game? if a new game turns out bad, it dies quickly. if it turns out good, they likely found just he right combination and you dare not trust them to tinker with it. whether it’s nerfing Oro and Urien in 3s or removing roll canceling in CVS2, their attempts at fixing good games have looked pretty clueless.
I think patches can be good for a fighting game, it’s just very rarely actually happened.
Like, I actually enjoy SFxT now. God knows, I hated that game when it first came out. The console version of KOFXIII is technically a patch on the arcade version, and the arcade version of KOFXIII had some severe balance issues. SFxT and KOFXIII are, I think, the biggest examples that patches can work.
Problem is, those examples are few and far between.
Biggest problem I’ve had with patches/updates is the top down approach (bring the top tiers down) is used more often than the bottom up approach. Still, the top down approach can work, as it did in KOFXIII. K’, Kula and Raiden were dominating that game, now they are mid-tier. If they had done nothing but nerf them like is often done, they’d be unusable now, but the devs actually gave it enough thought to nerf the most overpowered aspects of them while also buffing some of their weaknesses. Now, those characters are nowhere near as bad as they were, but they still stand more than a chance against the rest of the cast.
… In other words, patching/updating can work, it just takes deep and careful thought. It’s not always wise to assume that such thought will be given, though.
I also think I won’t ever use a charge character outside of 3s (only CVS2 Guile).
No charge character in any other game come as close to the knowledge required to master a charge character in 3s.
In fact, if someone likes charge characters, I don’t understand why aren’t they playing 3s.
I play charge characters *almost *exclusively in most games (Except KoF, CvS2, and MvC2), and I love 3S BECAUSE of how complex CP’s get. Dat REMY is bananas…
But yeah… St = Blanka/DJ/Dictator/Hawk, 3S = Remy/Gouki/Yang, Alpha2 = Charlie/O.Chun, Vampire for now is Morrigan, but I’m working on Rikuo, and GG is Venom… Mostly charge characters all day…
I think on the other hand, playing characters like Leona and Ash in KoF is MUCH more complex because of the double charge buffering that is needed within combos. It’s not even close to say Boxer with his headbutt land dashpunch buffering… Nah, Ash’s flash kick xx dash combo in 13 is the hardest thing I’ve ever attempted and accomplished in a fighting game, execution wise.
*More people play the newer fighters than they do the older fighters, even though most of the old fighters are on the exact same consoles and are way cheaper. Clearly, if Updates and patches were introduced to the older games, new people would be inclined to play because the games would feel fresh, older players will have far more new shit to learn, the games would be well balanced, and the top tiers for the older games would most likely no longer consist of 1/4 to 1/8 of the cast and that tier wouldn’t be so far apart.
Because some random bro found a new piece of tech that is marginally useful after a shit ton of years, doesn’t justify keeping the entire game the same and stale in today’s age, where you can change the shape and face of a game’s competitiveness on the fly. Finding lame reasons why these sub par old games can’t change is just ensuring that the game’s base wont grow beyond where it is.*
Meh, chess as it’s known today was more of a 15th-16th century thing. And some hundred years later it got patched with stalemate and the likes. Also, there was a glitch fix in 1972 :~ Probably more things I’m missing.
IMO, people look at this completely backwards. Until everything in a game is figured out, known, and implemented by good players, you aren’t playing at top level. When you patch a game you’re setting everyone back from where the game was. If the top level of a game is ass then it might be better to try and fix it. “Keeping it fresh” by patching a game, to me, is resetting everyone so that the level of play is more even. I think that it can appear to be more interesting to see a new game for shock value and and WOW factor, but it isn’t really as exciting to play a new game that hasn’t been fully explored because “high level” doesn’t really exist yet and it isn’t as engaging to me.
I realize the stark difference in metagame development between the two genres. What I was getting at is the developer effort and post-release support that went into Starcraft’s many balance patches. Blizzard went above and beyond the call of understanding how the game was being played at every level. It is obvious that most fighting game devs do not take the same approach, though they are getting better about at least making the attempt.
On the numbers note: The damage of individual moves doesn’t matter so much as the amount of damage a character can practically get out of a hit, and how many different situations in which that damage can be applied. Less damage means your opponent has more chances, and we’ve all learned how bad that can be the hard way one time or another. I think HP values and damage are important factors in balance, but just looking at that alone is about as useful as looking at the binary. You miss the most important parts of the picture.
True, but isn’t HDR the highest selling Xbox Live/PSN title of all time, or at least it was. More people still play HDR than they play games like CVS2 and VSav.
Yes of course, there’s no argument that Brood War balancing didn’t turn out very well. Though, this is also related to the talent of the developer themselves. Many would argue that Starcraft 2’s patching history has been pretty bumpy, though this is still a very touchy subject as the game is relatively young for the intended successor of Brood War.
Sc2 forums in a nutshell: Every race has several argument for how every other race is overpowered and they themselves are under-powered.
Yes of course, combo’s and ABARE are more important then raw damage numbers, but that doesn’t change my point. In an rts, if X unit is doing +5 more damage then it should be with it’s primary attack, you can’t block that or tech that, that unit is going to be curb stomping shit that it was never meant to do well against, and entire builds and strategies are going to be rendered unusable on the opposing side. The balance of the game will be grievously upset at high level play where all players involved have nearly perfected their macro and micro games.
Fighters on the other hand, maybe you might not agree with the damage output of a certain character, but slight differences in the damage they generally deal off hits isn’t going to fundamentally alter the way the game is played. It might help players since they might need to guess right less, but it won’t change the meat of the games fundamental gameplay and strategy the way it would in an rts.
Well I always find some spare time to play SF Alpha 3 since it was my entry FG (well technically it was SF2…but you know, I’m talking about a game I got on my own…and can actually remember) and I got it in 98.
