capcom has a balanced fighting game, its called vampire savior. Im not sure about Plasma sword though cause I think im the only person whos played that game
The best part of this thread so far is the different names of the posters in here. Like Seriously BallTapper. lol
Even VSav isn’t as balanced as people think. When we see bottom tiers win tournaments, it’s also due to the level of play in Japan (and the fact that the Japanese tournament format makes it easier for low tiers to do well).
The answer for all current fighting games is because there’s no Melee scene, and Smash 4 isn’t out yet.
Yeah level of play majority of the time has more to do with lower characters winning than the balance of the game. When the players are playing at that high of a level they know the ins and outs of the matchups vs. the top characters and won’t let straight textbook top tier play beat them.
It’s not just Capcom games of course. usually the first thing we hear when a new game comes out is how balanced it is, and inevitably we find out over time it isn’t true. Capcom games are just more popular so everyone is eventually aware of their balance shortcomings.
I think if a community believes their game is really well balanced it’s a sign that they haven’t figured it out yet or never took it to a high enough level. SF4 appears to be the most balanced Capcom game ever and IMO it’s a result of homogenizing the cast so everyone has crappy same-y tools and the fact that they release a patch every year so no one feels the pressure to really figure out how balanced the game is or play top tiers once they figure it out.
I don’t play VSav but from what I hear from some of the players around here it’s the same as any Capcom game. So not balanced but Japan makes every character look good.
3s is an interesting case to me because of the balance vs perception of balance. You look at the tier list and see what basically amounts to an 8 character game. It’s a top 8 with various playstyles and no matches worse than 4-6 and so a lot of people compare it to MVC2 - a game where the upper echelon of characters are viable and you just don’t play anyone else if you want to win. Then you see how the game evolved in each country. In Japan there’s a huge glob of people playing the top 8 characters and a few sick low tier guys who end up placing high. Europe is pretty similar. in America they only played 3 characters. you see an occasional sick Alex/Ryu/Ibuki but mostly no one ever bothered unless you were Chun Yun or Ken.
It just seems like the mentality is different. Americans back then figured out who the upper few characters were and picked only those so they had a good shot at winning. I think you see this in UMVC3 as well where people are experimenting a lot with teams trying to figure out what give them the best chance or how they’re going to deal with MorriDoom. it’s only SF4 where people pick one character, stick with them, and pray to Capcom that their character will be good in the long haul. to me this isn’t a sign of a balanced game but a sign that American SF4 players forgot how to tier whore.
This. There are no good characters in SFIV, only those that are less mediocre than the rest.
I’ve actually had VSav players tell me that saying the game is balanced and that low tiers can win is almost an insult to the actual players who play low tier (and the amount of work they have to put in).
You have to consider that alot of casuals came in to the scene via SFIV. When Marvel 3 rolled around enough of them “saw the light” so to speak and figured out that tier whoring is fine.
Options through gameplay is more important than the amount of characters that have options any ways. Which for a Capcom game in general, the characters in this game have a lot of options. If they didn’t Doom/Storm/Sentinel wouldn’t be beating Zero/Task/Vergil grand finals of a top player only regional.
also considering how this conversation went, I thought I should leave this here.
its easy to win
The game actually does just annoy the fuck out of me for the reasons you described.
I don’t like playing it very much, I play other games and enjoy them more.
I play it because others do and it’s sit around and watch or join in on the casual set ups which usually run Marvel.
Anakaris is so nicely done
VSav is a real poster child for balance
The 2 games are indeed similar in many aspects, but the existence of XF changes a lot. In MVC2 the last man standing wasn’t potentially as dangerous as a full 3-character team if not more. IMO “hype” should come out of a pure display of skill, and not from a game that has no real momentum so the winds can change so easily at any phase of the match. That’s just silly. Marvel 3 is exciting to watch exactly because stupid shit can happen which can make the final result less predictable. For me it’s spectating for comedy, not for quality.
MVC2 had that slippery slope phase where the match ended before it really ended, which was a problem, and MVC3 turned that problem upside down into a totally different problem. At least with 1v1 fighting games you don’t get any of that headache. Your options stay the same throughout the whole match, and your ability to make a comeback is neither hindered nor inflated by the game’s system.
This was true when vanilla was still young. Now it feels like most of the possible ideas don’t really hold any water, and many of the dominating ways to victory are the same just in slightly different forms. i.e. the game is mostly explored in terms of what the system rewards the most.
@tataki…when Vanilla was young if you weren’t picking Phoenix you were fucking up. There’s nothing as strong as Vanilla Phoenix in this game. You’re seeing so much stuff work in major events in this game. Morrigan/Doom/Vergil, Magneto/Doom/Sentinel, Ryu/Magneto/Sentinel, Viper/Vergil/Strider, Viper/Magneto/Dante, Zero/Dante/Strider, Chris/Dante/Strider, Firebrand/Doom/Shuma, Wolverine/Doom/Vergil, Wolverine/Dorm/Shuma, Felicia/Vergil/Taskmaster, Vergil/Taskmaster/Nova, Trish/Wesker/Dante, Viper/Doom/Ammy, V.Joe/Strange/Morri, V.Joe with a bunch of other characters… they’re all powerful and have potential to do big things in a tournament. A lot more teams have potential to do big also.
With 1v1 fighting games you get the headaches of being forced into general matchup issues that can’t be overcome without switching up characters. In this game you do a lot more to overcome a matchup before going to the character switch thing. Which because it’s a 3 on 3 game you can still play your main character and just add characters to the team instead of being forced to commit to an entirely different playstyle just to combat a matchup. The fact that Marlin Pie hasn’t had to change his team since the release of Ultimate and Rayray only needs to change one of his characters to keep up in Marvel shows that very clearly.
Yeah XF is XF, but at top level play it is blown early a lot to keep people from dying in situations before the XF3 becomes a factor. Meaning you get to see a lot more matches where XF isn’t used to blow through the whole match since people know taking that incoming mix up means they may not get to use it. You start to see more and more XF1 early blows to keep from getting punished or happy bdayed and the match plays out over a longer period from there. Even Phoenix is blowing XF early when she’s sitting on 5 bars, and that is a huge risk to take to stay in the match with a character that was given matches a lot more freely in Vanilla. Plus the characters in the back spot are characters that are more capable without meter/XF resources than Psylocke or Commando ever were while still providing heavy support.
- I don’t see how the teams you mentioned are supposed to fare well against a properly played Morrigan/Doom/Vergil. While players like Jwong or PR Rog probably play better as Wolverine compared to many other characters, in theory if they could play Morrigan/Doom/Vergil just as well as they play Wolverine they’d be getting much better results IMO.
And still the player examples you gave avoid the problems. Marlin Pie already played Doom, which is now mandatory. Magneto (Rayray) and Dormammu are 2 of the most versatile characters in the cast, a quality that isn’t there for many other characters.
- If you compare to 1v1 fighting games then a 1v1 “character” should be equal to a full team in MVC3. Like you can’t say that “MVC2 is balanced because whatever/whatever/Sentinel is a competent team”, if you have a top character to back you up then you did resort to a character switch… Also 1v1 fighting games are designed, at least in theory, that every character will have the tools to handle every matchup. Potemkin may be a slow fat grappler but he has tools XYZ especially against zoning. While in MVC3 you have some characters that are extremely limited and one dimensional, like Haggar.
TL;DR Matchup problems are even bigger in this game compared to 1v1 games.
- While the anchor characters are indeed better than the MVC2 assist characters, a real comeback of 1 character against a team of 3 without XF rarely happens due to how the game is designed. It basically goes heavily towards that MVC2 direction. I don’t see XF1 being used outside of happy bdays… Maybe just to secure a kill on a point character that your team can’t handle and assuming you are not afraid of the anchor at all.
I found a profoundly well written article that sums up why people like MVC 3
Nice link.
Training to take on DevilJin 1on1? (if only it had Sean!)
You definitely haven’t watched the game being played enough if you only see XF1 during happy bdays or not being used to kill someone.
There’s a lot more teams that are powerful and viable in tournament still than MVC2 has probably ever had. Haggar works well in this game since on point his movement is still better than people give it credit for and he’s at the exact position he needs to win the match from the start. Plus he can put people behind him that allow him to do things that Potemkin couldn’t do in GG and that can also fight his problem matchups much better.
Reacting to the opponent’s XF activation with your own to avoid getting smacked when he cancels out of blockstun doesn’t count for that matter, because once your opponent removes the threat of a late XF, you have basically secured your lead and you’ll have no problem burning your XF early as well to preserve it. Or maybe you had a totally different scenario in mind?
Again, powerful in relation to what? I gave you an example of a team that would pose a big problem to most of the teams you mentioned and you still haven’t answered what those teams have that lets them fight this specific team. (Point Haggar included.)
You see a variety in tournaments because those varied teams fight each other, but when push comes to shove, at the most effective level of play your team options really narrow down.