A couple of points.
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No matter what Capcom does with this game, there will always be a very vocal percentage of players that will complain. Whatever Capcom does, do NOT make changes, based on appeasing these players. They will never be appeased, and you risk alienating the base of players that actually buys and plays your product.
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I am honestly against the idea of a rebalance at all; I think the beauty in SF lies in the opportunity for player ingenuity, and Capcom is doing their games a disservice by robbing the community of that important opportunity. While I understood the changes while they were being monetized, I really don’t get the point of a free update, from a business perspective, and I don’t agree that it’s what the players actually want, but that’s another issue.
Whatever you guys do with AE, from this point… please leave it alone after that. Let the game develop. For all the whining and complaining about Yun and Yang, at Evo this past weekend, there was next to zero Yang representation, and the #1 Yun player in the world (the #1 OVERALL player in the world) fell to characters that are decidedly lower in the accepted rankings. If the BEST player, using the BEST character can be defeated, handily, then your game is pretty balanced, and it bodes well for the competitive viability of the game going into the future.
Do NOT CATER TO LAZY PLAYERS any longer. Especially in a free patch, there is no need to cater to lazy players. If this is, indeed, the last version of SF4, you guys have already monetized it as much as you can. The players that will continue to play after this patch are going to be the TRUE competitive players. Do NOT alienate them, in favor of a faction of players that only play your games on the surface level… for a month or so. You have an entire community, that is growing, based on SF4 being a very good COMPETITIVE game. Cater to that.
- That all being said, you’re going to change AE. It’s been announced, so we might as well get to the requests. I’ll start with non-gameplay related stuff.
A) The Replay Channel is still pretty bad. The search funciton is next to worthless, since it only searches for players currently sharing replays… and nobody ever does this. Instead of doing it like that, allow the search function to look for any current replays featuring that player. That way, I don’t have to scour the rankings, looking for matches with a particular player.
B) Drop the 5 player limit on follows. I don’t see why this is necessary at all. I had to create 3 new PSN accounts just to follow players, and that’s still not enough really. Unless there’s some real, technical limitations, preventing us from following more players, just remove the cap.
C) If you’re going to reset BP/PP again, I’d prefer if you used the BP algorithm from the arcade, personally. I mean, this is “Arcade Edition”, right? It is just more interesting. It is SUCH a grind to level up to Master rank on consoles. Literally, only a handful of players do it. While I don’t think it should be made incredibly easy, it should be significantly easier than it is. Anyone that can level up to Master rank in less than 15-20K matches, has to be a booster… and it shouldn’t take that long. In arcades, you can get to Master rank in just a couple of thousand matches… maybe it shouldn’t be quite that easy on console, but anything north of 10K matches, with a 80% win ratio is pretty ridiculous. Ranking people up, gives incentive to play, and grinding from A+ to Master takes FOREVER.
Ok… that’s it on the non-gameplay related stuff. Onto the important things.
A) DO NOT MAKE YUN/YANG/FEI WEAKER. Yun is a dynamic character, with a strong offense, and weaker defensive options. He HAS weaknesses. Make your players uncover them. Fei is a very strong, very safe character with a strong mid-range game, and a strong up close game. His range game is lacking, so the natural answer is to zone him out. Make your long-range fighters stronger again, and Fei will have issues. Fei is only SO good now, because the long-range characters were made too weak in AE. Make them strong again, WITHOUT MAKING FEI WEAKER, and he wil be more fair for the cast.
Yang is NOT on Yun or Fei’s level. People only complain about him, because they associate Yang with Yun. Please understand this. There is ZERO reason to make Yang weaker. He is a perfectly balanced character, and one of the most interesting characters I’ve ever played in a Capcom game (I’ve been playing competitively since CvS1 in 2000… casually before that). Do not let the whining class of players (whom, again, will not be appeased, no matter what you do… they complained about Sagat in SF4… Cammy in SSF4… and Yun in AE) ruin an amazingly complex character, with incredible potential. Please.
B) Viper, Ken, Sagat, Akuma, Blanka, Makoto and Seth are PERFECTLY TUNED CHARACTERS. They are exactly where they need to be. Perfectly capable of defeating anybody. Do NOT touch them.
C) The characters that were made weaker for AE, need to be restored to their SSF4 stature, if you MUST change the game.
Abel- Give Abel back his Breathless. Good players had ways around it. If you MUST change anything about Breathless from SSF4, remove his ability to cancel it. That way he’ll be up for FULL punishment whenever it is avoided. Slowing it down, removing armor on the moving portion, reducing damage, and having it take longer for recovery, essentially made it go from Breathless to Worthless in almost every single match-up. It was already on useful in a handful. Give it back. None of the other changes to Abel were very significant, so they can stay… Just give Breathless back. He needs it in some important fights.
Cammy- Just put her back to SSF4. She’s Ok now, but the entire game would be better, if she was VERY strong. She would give Yang issues (since he has a very hard time dealing with low Dive Kicks… another reason Yang doesn’t need to be made weaker…). Just give her back.
Adon- Give back his wake-up timing from SSF4. There was no reason to remove it.
Ryu- Give Ryu back his Low MK. That is a staple of Ryu’s arsenal. Make it good.
Honda- While I do agree that Honda needed a damage reduction… he didn’t need any other changes from SSF4 to AE. Give him his Headbutt back. Give him his U2 back.
Guile- Just put him back to SSF4 status. Exactly the way he was before. Guile will provide parity, and give defense a chance in SF4 again. People said he was too strong in SSF4, but I didn’t see Guile winning tournaments. At the end of the day, offense won out, and it still will. At least with a strong Guile, defene will have a chance. There is no need to overthink this one… just make him exactly like he was in SSF4.
Balrog (Boxer)- Same with Guile. Put him back to SSF4 status. That is all.
Bison (Dictator)- Give him back full damage on s. HK. He needs to be able to punish people for having a bad mid range game… Without that, he struggles to do damage. Give him that back. Return his U2 to SSF4 motion. He needs that. Changing pushback on Scissor Kicks wasn’t really necessary, but it’s not a huge deal either way. Good players knew how to avoid Scissor Kick traps anyway.
Dhalsim- I honestly don’t even know what changed with Sim from SSF4 to AE… I just know he’s less effective. I don’t know if it’s the overall direction of the game that made him comparatively weaker, or if he was actually made weaker himself… either way, there needs to be SOMETHING done to allow him to deal with high-powered offense better. The problem with this is that if you give him a tool to deal with high powered offense, that might make him way too effective against offenses that aren’t quite as strong, and Dhalsim will just dominate the game. If you have to choose between Sim dominating, and Sim losing to high powered offense, I’d choose the latter. At the end of the day, he’s just one character. There’s no need to fundamentally change the game, just so one character can be optimal.
Chun Li- Give her back everything she had before. She was a dynamic character, albeit slower paced. She fit well. There was no need to make her d/f LK any worse. She didn’t need to be made weaker. Now she is too weak. Rebuild her to SSF4 status.
Rose- Same. Rebuild her to SSF4 status. Restore Soul Satelite. She absolutely needs it, especially in a game with higher powered offenses. In all honesty, that move isn’t even enough. She still wouldn’t dominate. Stop catering to lazy players when making changes. Players that couldn’t account for Soul Satelite are not players that even understand all the changes you make to your games. There is no need to cater to that.
Fuerte- In the same boat… players that complain about Fuerte aren’t players you need to listen to. Give Fuerte back everything that you took away from him. He needs that, at least. He honestly needs more than that, but I’m no Fuerte expert, so I can’t say much. I will say, that much like Dhalsim, Fuerte is the kind of character that can completely ruin a game, competitively, if he is too good. You should make a real attempt at making Fuerte more vialbe, but do not bend overy backwards for him.
Rufus- Still good enough to win. Restore his damage on Messiah Kick to SSF4 level. He’s fine with that.
Dee Jay- I think Dee Jay is on the right track. Maybe some tiny changes to Air Slasher (slight damage increase, or meter build increase) should be enough. He is fundamentally strong, and will get better over time.
Evil Ryu- Maybe give him a tiny bit more health.
Gen- Just put him back to original SF4 status. Let us have some fun with him.
Juri- I think Juri is capable. Maybe a tiny increase in damage on a couple of her moves, but overall, she is strong. She just needs more time to develop.
Dudley- Give him more range on cr. MK. That would make a WORLD of difference with him.
Zangief- Let his EX Green Hand knock down again.
I’m not terribly knowledgeable on the other characters. I supposed Hakan, Cody, Hawk, Vega (Claw), Dan and Gouken need SOMETHING to make them more viable. Guy as well. Nothing huge for Guy, Cody or Gouken… they’re each just missing one tiny thing.
Vega, Hawk, Dan and Hakan could use a few new tools.
[COLOR=#003300]Overall, just please don’t make ANY character weaker. AE is a very exciting game (as seen at Evo) BECAUSE of strong characters. Your design philosophy of making VERY strong characters was not wrong… the problem people had with AE is that you made Yun EXTREMELY strong, but at the same time, decided that characters that were never as strong as Yun, to begin with, needed to be made weaker. They don’t. Restore the strength of previously strong characters, keep the presently strong characters where they are at, and try to make as many of the other characters as vialble as you can. Please. Please, please DO NOT MAKE ANY CHARACTERS WEAKER THAN WHAT THEY CURRENTLY ARE.[/COLOR]
Thank you.