Generally speaking the glass cannon concept rarely works out as expected. Usually it ends up being that the strength of the tools means that the lack of health doesn’t matter or matters less and you end up with an obviously stronger than normal character at high level play. If they don’t end up being top tier they are usually garbage tier because they have low health AND shit tools.
It can work but it’s rare.
Look at Marvel 3; Vergil, Phoenix, Magneto and Zero are all lower health characters. Other somewhat commonly seen characters also below average health with Storm, Dante, Amaterasu, Strider, and Nova.
SF4 has had Akuma in the top tiers in every version and has appeared in EVO top 8 in 6 out of 7 times. Most of the characters in SF4 history of top tiers have been below 1k health characters, not all of course but most of them are even 900 health chars. Viper, Seth, Cammy, Ibuki, Sakura, Yun, Yang, and Gen are all below average health. Even now Evil Ryu got nerfed down to 950 in USF4 and it didn’t phase him one bit.
Balancing through health is IMO the least effective form of balancing. It DOES have an effect, it’s just the least effective form. Personally I’d prefer if Capcom went the KOF route and everyone in SF had the same amount of health and instead they concentrated on balancing the actual moves themselves.
Any Alex mains want to do some theory crafting for him?
I think his v-skill won’t be a returning move (a-la Cammy). I actually think it will be a low-hitting throw, or something that will shore up his low game.
V-reversal I think might be the first throw AC we see, kind of like Rose’s in A2. I was thinking his back fierce (headbutt throw) from 3S.
V-trigger… who the hell knows. Probably just gets angry and does more damage. Can’t think of what to give him.
Also do people think he’d be completely motion character? His charging didn’t seem to hamper him like it did with Birdie in alpha, but partitioning might have had something to do with that.
Trying to imagine Alex in a totally different game is kind of hard…
A low only throw? Throws hit low normally so I don’t really understand what this means.
Low only? That’s terrible.
This game isn’t 3S so his ‘low game’ doesn’t need anything done to it.
I think something fitting and unique would be a way to combo into throws like his unique mechanic with turned state + back-fierce/powerbomb.
So maybe in v-trigger he has more ways to combo into throws or more of his moves put the opponent in a turned around state opening up more options for bigger damage.
v-skill i think could be something mobility related.
v-reversal i don’t know. i’d much rather see his back + fierce improved on rather than just used as a reversal. it’s such a cool move, does not deserve to be just a reversal thing. reversal could be a throw of some kind though which would be cool.
Trying to imagine Alex in a totally different game is kind of hard…
A low only throw? Throws hit low normally so I don’t really understand what this means.
Low only? That’s terrible.
This game isn’t 3S so his ‘low game’ doesn’t need anything done to it.
I think something fitting and unique would be a way to combo into throws like his unique mechanic with turned state + back-fierce/powerbomb.
So maybe in v-trigger he has more ways to combo into throws or more of his moves put the opponent in a turned around state opening up more options for bigger damage.
v-skill i think could be something mobility related.
v-reversal i don’t know. i’d much rather see his back + fierce improved on rather than just used as a reversal. it’s such a cool move, does not deserve to be just a reversal thing. reversal could be a throw of some kind though which would be cool.
edit: also if ‘ryu clone with shit damage’ means Sean…
lol please play the games.
Let me clarify: think Dudleys low roundhouse, or necro’s snake fang (actually I was thinking of nightmare’s low “throw” from soul calibur). It would be blockable, but it would give him some low-throw mixup. I think someone said his biggest weakness in 3s was poor lows and poor range on his grabs.
I actually like the concept of more back turned properties during v-trigger.
I still stick to back fierce being his v-reversal. Rose’s AC in alpha 2 was total bullshit, wouldn’t mind if Alex had it. I’s not like he has a ton of reversal options; and he’s not ST gief/hawk/honda who could negative edge with 1 frame spd’s.
I like games that dont have health values as well. Skullgirls, KI, KOF they all balance around tools. You may have a few characters that do more damage on single hits, but you’re not given everything and then balanced by dying on a couple clean hits to every other character that can do damage.
i doubt we will see anything like that because it belongs in 3S very specifically. they exist in a game with parry for a good reason.
when you remove parry there’s no reason for throws which are blockable and only hit high/low. something like that would only be useful if the position it left you in was advantageous. regardless what you’re describing is more of a special move.
i love his back+fierce. it is one of the coolest moves in the game with one of the most interesting uses. having it as just a stupid reversal would be a complete waste imo.
as for reversal options. it can just be its own move. you also don’t need many reversal options… alex has ex knee anyway.
i know this may be shocking to some but you can actually just wake up blocking. you don’t have to wake up guessing throw, srk, jump, low short, etc.
Not that I’d ever use them, but I think it’d be interesting if Yun and Yang returned as a tag team. Their V skill would be used to switch characters. To compensate for the tag mechanic, they would either have lower health or they would share 1 health bar (I think the former makes more sense).
Balancing around health is just a way of balancing around damage, so it’s definitely possibly to do well (see Guilty Gear), but too often it’s down as a half assed “something must be done but we don’t know what” measure
Balancing around health has overall worked really poorly in Street fighter. More tools usually means easier ways to confirm into damage, as well as more ways to keep or put your character in favorable situation, and even more ways to avoid damage thus making the decreased stamina a mute point.
Akuma is one of the most extreme examples of balancing by stamina, but he is always top tier in every game he’s in (besides Alpha 2, and 3s where he is just below top)…cause his abundance of tools far outweighs the drawback of low stamina/stun. This is another reason I feel he is poor character design, and shouldn’t be in the game.
New to the thread so. Hi!
I’d really like to see Poison return, but it’s hard to think of how they could implement her, v-trigger and v-skill wise. She seems to be a somewhat popular character at least, so I’m keeping my hopes up.
You’re cherry-picking, or at least looking at the symptoms rather than the cause. What about SFxT? Health had a real effect in that game, because of the way the two-character system worked. SF4 Akuma’s moveset is intentionally designed to be strong, and he was always in the top range because those tools interacted well with the system, not because health balancing was ineffective. Chun never particularly enjoyed being a 900-health character.
In Marvel, it’s not just that Phoenix is strong despite low health. It’s more like Phoenix couldn’t EXIST without her health being that low. You absolutely could not put that character in a game with universal health values. You could probably manage it with Hulk, but it would still be difficult in a less extreme way. Do you think it doesn’t matter that Hulk has more health than normal?
The question is whether the health value changes the effort required to kill the character. In Marvel, that answer is usually no. Most serious characters will usually kill you in one combo either way (but on the whole, characters like Zero aren’t even very far below average. Most characters in that game are “low-health” characters.) The question becomes more complicated when you add things like super armor, hidden missiles, and chip damage, and then health values can actually make a difference.
In SF4, does 50-150 health change the effort required to kill you? Probably, but maybe not a lot, because of how important knockdowns are. Again, see Chun-Li, who didn’t have the oki tools.
In SFxT, where damage was high and it was relatively easy to wake up safely, health mattered a lot. It was the difference between being the turtler or the turtlee, and the difference between switching to your tag partner or losing the round.
SF5 does not carry over the tag mechanics, but it does carry over the damage/wakeup portion of the formula. That suggests a larger penalty for having low health than the previous game in the series.
Beyond specifics of certain games though, it bears repeating that health isn’t just a means to balance. There’s certain character archetypes that can only even exist because of variable health.
You can make those same characters exist without a variable health system. Akuma could exist without being tied to a health system, youd just have to adjust him differently within the system.
Phoenix is a rare case because she’s designed to be pretty much a mugen character.
