Well it’s not that game is unbalanced its the team that created the game that is unbalanced.
After all it is there game not ours too say what goes in and what doesn’t.
If I had worked on SF4 for example and I was in charge of one character I would try to maximize its potential against all others. And that to me is what goes on behind the scenes making SF. It’s a mentality of ‘you better make your character good or mines going to beat yours’. Then they ship it with no regards as to what the fans think. To some extent. And thats what makes a game broken. I’ve been playin SF for 22+yrs and to me SF4 is broken. There are too many much WTF!? moments. Just to memorize all the WTF!? moments and learning how to counter them is all to tirerying. Whwn I’m just trying to have fun with a game but then again thats what makes some of us better than the rest cause we learn to master the games flaws and plus’s.
Well, ultimately a game is supposed to be fun. Balance for the sake of balance is silly.
One of the things which makes games fun is variety! If a game were so unbalanced that everyone used the same one or two characters, or if it were like rock paper scissors, it’d be boring and no one would want to play. Everyone wants to play whatever character they like, and be able to have a decent shot at winning. Thus the concept of balancing is born.
But some people seem to forget why balancing exists, and want something perfectly balanced for the sake of balancing.
Look at MvC2. Unbalanced? Yes. Fun? Yes? Would it be more fun if all the characters were buffed to the god tier so that most of the characters could be used competitively, while not nerfing current stratagems? Probably, but I doubt that’ll ever happen.
People need to remember it’s the entertainment that counts! Sure, many games can be ruined by imbalances, since it becomes unfairly difficult to win but with a few select characters, but it doesn’t always need to be perfect. Heck, perfection is virtually impossible. So people should cool their jets and just ask for viable characters so that everyone can play the way they want to.
Is that okay…?
I read through this and found it a good read. Very informative and true for the most part. I have to ask though (because as a noob i have no clue) what is everyones fear of nerfing/buffing those who need it? Ex: nerf all DPs across the board. Not REMOVE, just down the damage and priority making it more necessary to use timing when using it. This gives every character who had a weakeness to DPs go up in tier. This brings the shoto to their level. No tools have been removed, they are just weak now.
Now if the above would be true, explain why that removes variety? it just removes damage. You can still DP you just cant spam it like a scrub and win with it. Even if dumbing down damage was all you did to a character, it still doesnt remove variety. It removes overpowerdness. How is this boring again? Hakan can still oil up and execute hilarious moves, Ryu still throws fireballs all day, Zangief still does insane 360 throws. Im just confused…
Because they were already nerfed (I mean, look at the top tier, only Cammy and Akuma have DPs among the top tier) and there’s no need to nerf them any further.
Also, generalized, sweeping changes are less preferred over individualized tweaks. Nerf DPs any more and you might start to have a game where top tier characters who are able to maintain offensive pressure in a defensive environment are suddenly too good (resulting in a stratified tier list where the only ones who can compete with them are those with good, non-DP, AAs/reversals). Character variety is only one of the things to consider with balance, more often then not, considering which characters a change would favor is a more important factor.
I think games need more balanced players. Some players are just overpowered. Ban their hands from the controller! Or nerf them by making them play with one hand!
Anyway. There’s way too many people I wanna click the reply button on, so I think ill just type. As for low tier heroes. If I happened to pick a low tier character.i just went with the flow and enjoyed people routing for me to win. Even if I picked the character from the start without even knowing about tier. People use to like that I played viper in street fighter vanilla! (I don’t think people like her anymore though… Someone told me she’s overpowered…). That wouldn’t stop me from using her though still. (what stopped me eventually was the high execution and frequency of doing moves I feared messing XD) Also, because guy came into the game and he was the only one I liked enough to stop using her. I played him in alpha 3!!! I was glad to see him!
I choose characters before a game even comes out. I choose characters on YouTube. You know my decisions have nothing to do with gameplay! In fact, I enjoy asking friends and family who know me well,“hey, what character do you think imma use?” then they guess! Right or wrong, it’s fun to hear who they thought I would use and it’s funny when they guess right! We always guess each others characters before a game comes out. In fact, what look at characters and just thing, stuff like “that looks like a character (place persons name here) would use”.
And I agree with some dude up here! I enjoy being called not by my name!.. But by the character I use!!! I can’t imagine being called “that Honda player”. I’m just not an E.Honda kinda guy!
I use.
X Viper player/ now a guy player in SSF4AE2012 fadc edition
BAAANG shishigami! In blazblue
Jacky! Vf5
Jin,lili,raven,somewhat Lars in Tekken6! (I like a lot of Tekken characters)
Zero,Dante,dormammu. (mostly known for zero and dormammu cause my Dante doesn’t stand out enough) in mvc3.in ultimate, I woulda had a team involving strider nemesis and some 3rd guy. (but I haven’t been keeping up with marvel)
Natsu! SCV! (all though I didn’t use taki in the others…I used zasalamel in 3…I didn’t keep up with 4)
I haven’t even played much skullgirls, though I did buy it. But my characters are lady fortune and that ninja nurse chick. (I don’t even know all the characters names yet…)
There’s too many fighters! So Imma just stop here…I’m losin myself.
One more thing! To get my mind unfocused on player points in street fighter I made a new account called Koric the scrub. I happened to run into a deal for a month of gold for one dollar so why not? After reading this… My idea of what a scrub is has changed and now I’m regretting my choice of gamer tag! I think I’m sendin out the wrong signals now! I just wanted a fresh start cause my brain feels so stuck for improvement. (goin back to the bottom is showin me that…maby I do know what I’m doing XD). Anyway, I freely go into ranked to learn characters without losin points and… Off topic!
Not necessarily. Finding balance in an asymmetrically-balanced fighting game is a very difficult thing to accomplish, and not as easy as simply changing some hit boxes here or there. It requires hours of playtesting and fine-tuning to product even a decently-balanced game, and it’ll still get shit on by people.
In the natural order of things, there will always be strong and weak characters, and compressing the tier ranks isn’t so easy to decipher, especially with the relatively short competitive life cycles that games go through.
Certainly true…it is very difficult considering all the various options a character has, on top of new things that high level players may find (though these can be addressed in patches). It is impossible to have perfect balance, however to close the gap between characters as much as possible should be the goal…while not sacrificing a character’s uniqueness.
The problem with trying to close the gap is that more often then not, this is done at the cost of having interesting characters and matchups. We’re already seeing this with the SSFIV series where there’s a growing consensus that the entire cast consists of mediocre/bad characters, with the upper tiers simply being slightly less mediocre than the rest. This becomes a problem because it’s interesting matchups from strong that helps keep a game within the competitive circuit by driving the metagame/pushing the “arms race.”
