Rebalancing ST Remix

Classic Fighting Games SSF2T: HD Remix
381

The logic of Fei Long’s Short Fame Kick nerf was that Sirlin was afraid that if it was still safe that Fei Long, with the improved motion and the invincibiltiy of the Short Chicken Wing, would basically follow up a Chicken Wing with a Short Flame Kick 100% of the time… there would be no mind games nor guessing game, making the Chicken Wing too effective.

It’s the same logic that he used to choose to make Cammy’s Cannon Spike more punishable. Had it remained how it was in VST, Short Cannon Drill into Cannon Spike would also almost be a guaranteed 100% tactic against the large chunk of the cast that could NOT counter the Short Flame Kick nor the Cannon Spike.

I agree with the logic. It’s also why Balrog’s Jab Headbutt was nerfed. Giving people safe DP-like moves in 50/50 situations basically reduces the safe DP owner’s risk. Why not DP every time?

In Cammy’s case, I’d’ve actually traded Cammy’s super safe Drill for the safe DP. To me, Cammy’s safe DP was, like with Honda’s defensive nature, her “flavor”. Make her Cannon Drill only slightly safer, but not as spammable as it is now.

With Fei Long, I’m not sure. To me, the Short Chicken Wing is an amazing move now, and allowing Fei that Short Chicken Wing and a safe Short Flame Kick would be a harsh one to deal with. But given that the safe Flame Kick “resets” the match and doesn’t give Fei Long really a maintained offensive advantage, I actually think most Fei players would actually use the threat of the Short Flame Kick’s safety as a way to sneak in other things, to keep the offense going. Fei Long’s biggest weakness is his ability to get in, so doing a Short Flame Kick as a “safety net” might actually be a disadvantage for him… it forces him to try and get in again. So I actually think the mind games would remain after a Short Chicken Wing because Fei’s would rather keep poking and staying in your grill rather than Short Flame Kicking and pushing himself out a bit again.

I would also make the Short Chicken Wing have shorter invincibility. Instead of pure invincibility, I’ve give it Spin Knuckle / Lariat type invincibility… allow it to go through Fireballs, but let it get hit by other moves high or low after a few frames of total invincibility. Also, since the Roundhouse and Forward Chicken Wings are so hard to land, just as hard as the previous game despite easier motions, it would have been okay to leave their delays the same. I would have preferred to reduce the Chicken Wing’s ability to hit below it (raise the bottom of the hit box higher), so guys like Gief can Lariat it easier so as not to get locked down by Fei Long’s Fierce into Chicken Wing loop as easily now that the motion is so easy.

  • James
382

A bajillion pages ago I talked about wanting only four changes made to HD Remix to balance it, with removing stored ochio being one of them. The reason I would take it out is exactly what you’re saying, Kuroppi. It’s an abusive weapon that Honda doesn’t actually need to dominate, the same way claw doesn’t actually need knockdown after wall dive to dominate. Honda has the tools to win with or without stored ochio; it’s the same logic Sirlin used to tone down the wall dive.

383

You missed my point, they carried over an unintentional glitch and he was negative about it. Except he carried over an unintentional glitch and everything’s peachy.

384

Truth.

Not very involved. Yes, a group of us went out to NorCal (at our own expense) to play test, and yes we spent countless hours debating changes, but Sirlin was rather stubborn about taking advice from other people.

I said the only thing he should do to Chun is take away that horrible down/towards+medium kick move. Look what happened to Chun. James Chen was pretty adamant about having stored Ochio removed. It’s still in there. Jesse was fairly opposed to giving Fei’s flame kick more recovery. It’s now punishable.

And so forth…

385

I played Johnny in GGXX and watched him get worse (he is considered bottom tier in Accent Core). If I had taken Arc to task like this I would have been banned from their forums within a week.

One of the most popular tournament games, Third Strike, forced most 2i Ryu players to switch to Ken, and 2i Sean players, and 2i Akuma players…

The MvC2 re-release is currently running trailers for Ryu vs Wolverine, I thought they were new characters at first, then I double checked the select screen and saw that they were there the whole time, weird!

All of those games were accepted by the players despite doing pretty much the opposite of what they asked for, and SFHD, being based on the SF2 engine, with almost certainly better balance, and with the most top player input, is being actively sabotaged. How would anyone conclude that the takeaway from SFHD is MORE player involvement?

Typically a company will read what the players say, and then just go into their black box and do whatever they want. The players expect nothing, they get a little better than nothing, and everyone just plays it (or doesn’t play it), and moves on.

A great summary is listed on Sirlin’s site:

These discussions are like tutorials on the topic, everyone’s change list is exactly as described above, which is why they are mostly pretty bad ideas. Some of this conversation reminds me of when I was in school, my best friend worked at KFC and we knew that we were getting extra pieces on our order. Hookups are great for dinner, but probably not for game design.

Fortunately, players are disappointed in SF2 all the time and it has worked out ok in the past:

Maybe the answer was to involve no players? Maybe the answer was to frame the way they were involved so they didn’t expect another ST? Maybe there really isn’t any problem at all and it’s just internet drama?

386

Agreed.

387

I’m right there with you on Johnny, FMJ. Except I DO curse Arc all the time about what they did to Johnny. God, how I’ve cursed them. How many tears have been wasted on how I felt about how badly Johnny continued to be left behind.

There is a fairly significant difference, though. 3rd Strike and MvC2 were completely new games. They introduced new systems and were never designed to be balanced. 3rd Strike and MvC2 had no GOAL AT ALL in terms of trying to make their game balanced.

HD Remix mode was created predicated on the IDEA that it would be more balanced, and that the tiering would be more collapsed. Granted, I think the tiering IS more collapsed, and that HD Remix IS more balanced than VST, but not any significant margin whatsoever. Because the effect is so miniscule, I’d rather stick with the game we’ve been playing for 10 years. This game has had 10 years of insight, something NO GAME HAS EVER HAD when being rebalanced.

It’s called check and balances. That’s the whole reason why our government was created with it. Of course, our government isn’t the greatest example of how to make things work, but it is a concept that does have weight. Most game companies have this, as many people are usually involved in shaping the way the game turns out. I’m pretty sure there was more than one person working at Arcsys deciding what changes went into every character in Guilty Gear Accent Core. I agree wholeheartedly, however, that too many cooks spoil the broth, and that hard decisions would have to be made by someone. However, I think it’s always better to have at least TWO people with very different mindsets do such a thing. It’s always been the best way most art has been created (I always toss out Lennon / McCartney as the prime example). Three people might have even worked out all right.

But having more than one person is important to make sure they can keep EACH OTHER honest. Any one of us here, if we created HD Remix on our own, the game would make a lot of people angry and ther would be a ton of vitriol, but that’s because one person has too many preconceived notions and ideals that they’ll try and follow. If I made HD Remix, the game probably would have ended up being Street Fighter: Accent Core with too many weirdly complex things for no good reason.

Unfortunately, the person you quoted was Jeff Schaefer. While Jeff was a top player and a force to be reckoned with and a very insightful SF player, he once claimed Ryu would be top tier and unbeatable in Street Fighter III based on a preview PICTURE of Ryu’s side step kick (HCF + Kick).

And again, all these games did not have 10 years of knowledge to power the changes. ST introduced Juggling and Supers and such. Who knew how they would end up? HD Remix has introduced not a single new system. It has 10 years of knowledge behind it. This new mode was created TO BALANCE THE GAME. Not in a half-assed way like the new revisions of Third Strike in the arcade or SFA3 Upper, but in a real, thought-out way that wasn’t a scared reaction to Urien unblockables.

Maybe the answer was to leave ST alone.

  • James
388

I agree with this completely.

Very few players or game communities understand the culture and mindset at a game development company, and what it reacts to or what drives its decisions in deciding whether to make a game or how it goes about making that game.

Most employees at a game development studio (especially large ones) are not hardcore players: very few read forums, and most that do are looking specifically for player reaction to something they worked on.
Many game developers don’t play the game at all, and in some studios many employees/departments don’t play games much in general.

Game development companies largely don’t respond to hardcore players arguing back and forth about the details.
Two things game development companies DO listen to:

  1. how well their game sells or the level of buzz it gets
  2. if the community (or major subset of the community like the hardcore group) as a whole rally positively/negatively behind a specific thing.

The game development industry is very immature in their practices.
And egos (decisions made by wrong person or without doing research), ignorance (you’d be amazed at the variability of good/bad skills/knowledge across game developers, and when it comes down to assigning work these areas are often not considered OR they just don’t have a qualified person on staff so they just wing it), and penny pinching (cut features, cut playtesting, ship premature, hire less qualified staff, license cheaper engine or cut out certain characters that would be more to license, etc.) all contribute at different time to game suckiness.

Much like professional sports teams, game development staff (managers, grunts, and even whole companies/countries) often change radically over time.
This explains why you LOVED one version of a game, but the next release seems like it was done by somebody totally different who just didn’t get it.

Having Sirlin handle the Remix (to me) was an AMAZING thing.
He used his game/community knowledge + his take on design to really try to bring out a product that would take a major first step in bringing smart, knowledgable game design to the scene.
He covered player matching, control set-up, art, net code, training mode, sound, music, and experimented with new features like Remix mode and tournament mode.
And he even made sure to include the original version (and art) of ST (fully supported by all the features: stats, matching, etc.) in the game for those who wanted an untouched ST.

I really like Remix.
And for those who don’t, they can play ST.

I DO think discussions on Remix vs. ST or how to improve Remix are great, but they MUST come hand-in-hand with a universal community feedback that Remix/Sirlin had the right approach to the feature set delivered on the game: provide the original for purists, use knowledge of the game community to shape the game, provide refined game features like quarter rooms and control set-up, try to deliver some new features (tournament mode, hit box in training, button input on replays, record matches, et.c) to see what adds to the game, and keep specific people on the project wherever it ends up next.
Otherwise, his extra stuff (or extra stuff in other versions) will be largely disregarded (with some aspects being cherry picked per the whim/feel of the next games producer) as wasteful development cost.

Another major thing that needs consideration, is that these games NEED to attract the casual player as well as the hardcore player.
This is because there are not enough hardcore players out there to fund/justify the development of these games, and you need to sell a certain number of units which the casual players can provide.
So throw some cookies out to grab the attention of the casual player (new art, etc.), and just design those cookies to not have a material affect on gameplay.

The original sf2 didn’t require high skill level.
Once players were familiar with the game, it became apparent that Guile & Dhalsim could destroy the rest of the cast with patterns.

I really loved Hyper Fighting and it was very well received by hardcore players.
It sold VERY well on SNES, but it saw a big exodus by the masses at the arcades.

Super’s slow speed setting resulted in the game being skipped by a lot of players.

389

I’ll have to strongly, very strongly, disagree with this one.

Sega AM2 heavily listens to the top VF players in Japan, regularly sending employees out to top arcades to speak to the most active tournament players in the community on what needs fixing and balancing. The VF series receives constant revision. If you look in the VF5R thread in FG discussion the latest tier list goes from S to B, there is not even a C tier in that game and Sega is going to further revise and balance it in the future. You can see how the game (VF5R) went from five tiers (S through D) in version A and then was compressed to three tiers in revision B because Sega and AM2 are obsessed with listening to the Japanese players about balance. They even added a frame advantage counter to the replay system of VF.Net for people to see. Of course no one outside of Japan can play the game but that’s a whole different issue.

Blizzard and the professional Starcraft leagues spend hours every day compiling information about map statistics (mineral placement, win ratios between races, spawn locations, etc.) and bouncing ideas off of professional players and judges of how to better balance the game and maps. Starcraft: Brood War is incredibly balanced (maybe the most balanced competitive video game out there) because professional players provide so much insight and feedback on the design of the maps that they play on. Their objective isn’t to make their favorite race dominant but rather to make the maps as fair as possible for all possible races and spawn location possibilities. Balance is a major community effort amongst the top players who truly understand the most about the game and the results are truly astounding.

Sirlin understands a lot about ST, easily more than most people ever will, but to expect him to understand the long term ramifications of his balance changes, across the entire cast, is unrealistic. Sirlin himself said that ST is a ‘delicate ecosystem’ and that one change to alter once match-up could accidentally change every other character match-up drastically.

More players, good players, should have been involved in the balancing of HDR. There have been so many good ideas in this thread and several other threads about tweaking characters, but they had no chance to make it into the game. Even during the beta test on XBL look at what happened with Ken’s strong dragon punch…with feedback like that people could have easily negotiated around the balance changes that people have disagreed with the most. Instead we have changes primarily approved by Sirlin, and because they are locked into HDR, all Sirlin can really do is defend them forever or admit wrongdoing, which is a tough choice. He said he wanted it like this though, in exchange for being the sole person responsible for balance, he said “I’m David Sirlin, and I oversaw all the gameplay in HD Remix, so I deserve both your praise and criticism for all game balance issues.” on his website regarding HDR.

An overwhelming number of posts in the T.Hawk thread are complaints about the new dive, SUPER command bug, and lack of active grab frames on his regular 360 command throw. If the more veteran or knowledgeable T.Hawk players had a say in the redesigning of Hawk as a character in HDR I’m confident he would have come out much more differently in HDR than he did. Same goes for Chun-Li who we’ve seen extremely proficient players like NKI come out against her balance changes (enough that he switched to using Dictator) and James Chen has been critical of many changes as well. Is there honestly anyone who would have objected to those two (NKI & Chen) having an equal as a say as Sirlin in the balance changes of HDR when the game was being designed?

Well the game was touted as the next ST and was hyped as a game to be played for anther 15 years competitively like ST. So yeah…the hype was in extreme overdrive for HDR no to mention the hype lasted for two years because of the delays in releasing the game.

Personally I think the hype of reviving the ST scene pushed the game much further than it was ever intended to. Remember that rebalancing wasn’t in the original design plan for HDR but only arose once momentum and community interest in the game took off.

When you have top players switching characters, new bugs being introduced, universally disagreed upon balance changes, and a divided community I would doubt it’s just merely internet drama.

“The best version of SF2 is somewhere between ST and HDR” (James Chen quote?)… I think people are a little miffed because HDR had the potential to truly be one of the best fighting games of all time and stand the test of time as well as ST did. The potential is still there if Backbone/Capcom would allow more changes but instead people must take out their frustrations in the HDR/ST forums.

390

This sums up my feelings perfectly. Pretty much every change mentioned here is more of a reversion of a character or move back the way it was, or a happy medium. (Besides Akuma, heh.) A few were changes Sirlin even mentioned he would have liked to implement if he had the time, like T.Hawk’s dual dives in some way. HD Remix is a pretty impressive evolution of SFII. Knowing what this project could have been, though, is what sets this one apart, and why we post here about it. Who knows…after a few tournaments set players in their ways and demonstrate what the cast is capable of, Capcom may just listen. Crazier things have happened. If there’s any chance something we discuss would be considered for any future revision of SFII, it’s worth sharing, ne?

One of the things I like most about this forum is the overall level of maturity. Not many places on the internet do I find myself wishing I could have a live conversation about something with the people who post. Many good, constructive and interesting posts; thanks team. /tangent

If they never touch HD Remix again (a likely possibility), it will still be my favorite version of SFII hands-down. Sirlin and the team did an amazing job delivering something basically for the community. I really love the playability of the cast, the variety of options, and the great netcode. (I can’t play SFIV online with someone a few miles away, for the record, as we get disconnected constantly.) But it’s not quite on the mark yet. Having known the playstyle of ST and HD Remix, I definitely feel (along with quite a few people, it seems) that something between what we had in ST and what we have in HD Remix would be optimal.

Back to character specifics…O./R.Hawk have much better normals than N.Hawk, but there is one thing he lost that was wonderful: the reach on his standing roundhouse hitbox went all the way to his heel. It was just that much sweeter for tagging fireballers in the face, something T.Hawk could definitely use. Now given the choice between O.Hawk’s ability to hit lower and N.Hawk’s ability to hit farther, I think the right decision was made. Why not give the big man the best of both worlds? Both dives, no reversal bugs, perhaps a few more active grab frames (something between Zangief’s SPD and Siberian Suplex), and a badder boot would go a long way toward making him the T.Hawk we’ve always wanted.

391

When the task at hand is to rebalance a game that has been played hardcore for 15 years, I find it absolutely laughable that anyone could suggest NOT involving the players. No offense to Sirlin, but the collective player base is going to have waaay more knowledge than any one man. As well as I might know Chun and ST in general, I wouldn’t be comfortable making changes to Cammy, or Ken, or any other character. I would need input from people who actually play those characters. Even Buktooth (a casual ST player, by his own admission) has a better understanding of Chun than Sirlin does.

In retrospect, it’s pretty funny (or awful?) that throughout the planning/development of Remix, Sirlin frequently came to me with all kinds of random questions about ST, yet when it came down to the one thing I know the best (Chun), he didn’t listen to me at all.

392

You gotta remember this was not a majorly funded CapCom launch, this was an arcade port for a downloadable budget game kicked out to a 3rd party developer with a track record of straight ports. (Backbone)
The Remix aspect of the game was just another feature, and a new one at that and one that I expect was largely unfunded.
Backbone does not have the knowhow or a pipeline (established process) set up to rebalance games or find/consult/comprehend players, and outside of Sirlin, nobody there had the connections or profeciency to do it.

  1. does management view it as a material issue that justifies budget of time/$ (do they even comprehend it or its value)? Are there other, “more important”, things (new art, porting of ST, new music, shorter/cheaper development time, online menu, net code, etc.) that they feel need to be added/budgeted first?
  2. is there even a programmer/designer/tools currently assigned to actively be working on this aspect of the game? (Sirlin reports there was no programmer assigned to it) Does CapCom have a budget set aside to spend on this type of thing?
  3. does someone with clout have the opinion that it is not needed or that only so much time/money should be allocated for it? (often someone in charge makes a bad call but sticks with it to protect themselves or they just don’t see it)
  4. is the pipeline already out there, or would they have to create it? If the pipeline is not out there, how can a producer gauge the time/money budget without what should be a simple port game getting out of control. (over budget, over time)
    3rd party developers of ports want to produce a game cheap, fast, and relatively bug free to ensure they get more contracts in the future.

Sirlin expressed his being very open to patching the Remix in order to tighten it up after playtesting.
The complications there, however, are many fold:

  1. Sirlin is no longer on the project, and it seems that those who control it now at backbone are antagonistic toward him. (and probably dismissive of his ideas)
  2. CapCom/Backbone have very little incentive to patch the game: XBLA/PSN patches are expensive and a pain to do (due to the set-up with MS/Sony) and the changes likely won’t generate the added profit to justify doing them, Backbone probably has no budget/personnel budgeted to handle this, I don’t think Backbone (- Sirlin) has the competency to tackle this.

Also, Sirlin may have rejected ideas because he wanted to make his solo footprint on the game.
And preferred using his ideas (and getting credit for them) than to be looked upon simply as an idea broker.

If there is a collective of hardcore players who are REALLY serious about properly tuning the game (and they can agree upon it among themselse AND get the consent from the playerbase/community that their ideas as good), then they should get a Change Bible going that collects, reviews, approves, and makes clear and public full changes.
The more casual or cluttered or scattered or non-consensus the process is/results are, the more it contributes to the issue being unacted upon.

Start a new thread as the change bible.
Whoever starts it edit the first post to reflect the final agreed upon changes for each character as the process goes along.

393

That is a pretty great summary of exactly why the decisions on changes shouldn’t have been left in a single player’s hands.

394

People act as if Sirlin is above bias.

395

If he isn’t, who is? I don’t think I’ve seen one other person as passionate about ST than him. The guy did what he thought was the best he could do with the time he had. Jesus Christ.

I’m sure if he could go back to the drawing board he would fix a few things now that the game has been out for over a half a year, but quite frankly I can deal with what I have now.

396

There is no way any single person who plays ST can approach the game objectively and without some bias. The quote there is completely on the money–each person comes from their own limited perspective, and does not completely see the big picture. That is true of any one player–Sirlin included. Right there at the end, the part that reads: “Listen to them all, understand what they’re getting at, then come up with your own solution” is straight contradiction. If their individual perspectives aren’t qualified to make those calls, why is his? Sirlin putting on his “game developer” hat doesn’t somehow elevate him above individual biases.

The issue isn’t that people can’t deal with the game as it is. It’s what could make it better, and is it a better game overall than ST was. Clearly there are a lot of differing opinions on that–and that’s fine. Most of us are capable of being completely reasonable with each others’ tastes. On top of that, I’d say the majority of people I see who prefer ST like HDR quite a lot, and absolutely respect what it was going for, and just feel that the process wasn’t handled as well as it ought to be.

397

im no tourney pro but, Agreed ^. if sirlin was able to make the changes everyone universally agrees on, could capcom make $ on it? this is what makes re-re-balancing the game a possibility. the only way i see that happening is if people were willing to pay for the patch. i think it would work seeing as how mostly hardcore players are whats left online, and if “you” want to keep playing with the best, everyone else will have to pay for the patch. unfortunatly capcom, and whoever else, already has your $ and probably doesnt give a shit if you think the game is perfect or not.

Does anyone else have any idea how the powers that be can make $$ off re-re-balancing the game? the only reason we have HDR is cause it was a guarenteed money maker after the success of hyper fighting. maybe bundling in an actual exact port of VST with an upgraded HDR version 2.0 for $20 would work? those who already downloaded HDR can upgrade for $5?

398

Yes that is the point i was trying to make, thank you.

399

It’s not that easy. While this sounds like a great idea, Sirlin had access to the one thing that none of us have here on the Forums: the actual code.

As “expert” as a lot of like to think we are, none of us are infallible. That’s all this Forum is: one big, gigantic session of theory-fighter. Hawk’s Safe Dive is wonderful on paper. Everything about it screams “GREAT IDEA!”, but it takes actual play to figure out that, “Wait a second… maybe this isn’t so great…” I can make all sorts of suggestions, but without play testing it, we’ll never know how it actually turns out. Sirlin had access to tweak hitboxes, recoveries, and startups and then recompile the game in less than 10 minutes. None of us have that.

A change bible created here on the Forums would turn out just as faulty as anything else. Playtesting is what it is all about.

A bunch of us paid our own way to get to NorCal specifically to help playtest HD Remix. I somehow think we’d be willing to do it again if a re-re-balance patch was being worked on.

But as mentioned, how can Capcom make any money off of balancing the game? They didn’t want to make a Remix mode in the first place, and to make them consider spending money patching this mode that they didn’t even want, yeah, that’s a tough sell. You CAN’T charge people for the patch, either… it creates an uneven online experience. What happens when unpatched players try to play patched players? If you charge for it and force players to patch it to play online, that’s straight up extortion. That would be illegal in any state here in the U.S. :slight_smile:

The only way Capcom could be convinced to re-re-balance the game would be just out of the kindness of their hearts. Pretty much any time a company patches a game that is NOT a subscription game, it’s mostly either to save face or just out of the kindness of their hearts.

Maybe they can release new icons and themes and label them as “Patch Donation Gifts” and those of us in the know can buy them all, even if we don’t plan to use them, as a gesture of thanks for making the patch?

  • James
400

Well, this would be a problem with anyone involved in balancing the game, not just Sirlin. Naturally, everyone would have some bias towards their favorite character when proposing changes.

I guarantee you that my suggestions for Honda would be shot down by many others because it’s in their best interest for them to weaken him for the sake of their characters. Ultimately, I’m sure we could come to an agreement of some sort but there will be issues that maybe could not be agreed to and then what?
Who gets their way? Naturally, the person in charge of the project has to make a decision, so in the end would things really change?

I, just as many others would have liked to see some changes and characters handled differently but it’s not as simple as people would think. James Chen mentioned a great quote from Sirlin regarding changes that would effect the game universally:

A perfect example of this is Ryu’s fake fireball. From what I understand this was implemented to help him deal with Dhalsim but this tactic is so strong that it completely eradicates the buffs given to Honda to help him combat Ryu. And fake fireball is a GREAT tactic against any other character as well. IMO, once the elite players really start mastering the fake fireball it’s going to break Ryu but that is something that might not have been immediately visible (I didn’t really feel this way about it when HDR launched) and maybe there was no other viable options as alternatives, though I think giving him slightly more recovery would help.

We can complain about the results, especially if our favorite character got the shaft and while I understand the frustration of some of the people involved in providing feedback during the beta/design phase I think we have to understand the difficulty of the task of rebalancing such a highly regarded game. It would have been nice if everyone involved could have miraculously agreed to changes across all characters but there is going to be bias involved everywhere and it’s just an unrealistic expectation. I’m happy that the game turned out as well as it did.