NRS did that with MK9.
It was a terrible idea.
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Lots of middle ground between 2 and the 50or whatever mk9 had.
Can i get 4
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Had this discussion yesterday, frequent patching is bad.
In MOBAs where frequent patching is the norm, game depth per character is limited to 4 interactions - 3 abilities and an ultimate. So changes are easy to commit to memory after a short while of playtesting. MOBAs on the F2P model also shake up the meta constantly to keep the playerbase coming back for a slightly redefined experience to make up for the lower amount of depth between heroes in the game.
FGs have 1000s of interactions and balance patches take a very long time to commit to memory, patching frequently stagnates meta growth because it’s incredibly difficult to fully grasp how changes affect certain characters in smaller times frames, due to the depth of FGs interactions between characters. Frequent patching could also lead developers to believe certain characters are weaker than they actually are.
If we all remember, Akuma was initially received as being weak until Tokido showed off his strength a couple months after. If we had frequent patching, Akuma may have been overbuffed in that initial release window due to community outcry.
Frequent patching in FGs is bad, incredibly bad. One patch every 6 months at most is acceptable and gives the meta and characters room to grow and be assessed properly between patch cycles. So it’s just not feasible to release GOOD balance patches frequently, because the community wouldn’t have time to fully assess the prior patch in time, leading to overnerfs and overbuffs. This happens frequently in MOBAs.
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Again more often =/= frequent.
And yeah im sure they won’t get everything right, and you’ll get a character overbuffed or whatever but for one, that happens anyway, and secondly getting everything right isn’t the point. It’s to do a better job than 2 patches. Even one more patch would do that.
I disagree solely for the fact that as said above, not giving a games meta - especially an FG - room to breathe creates some ill-thought balancing decisions. I think the game is in a very good state right now, with most of the top tiers remaining strong and a lot of lower tiers moving up, I don’t think top 10 is very important now because about 20 of the cast are very competitively viable. Maybe more.
An initial patch at the season start, and a .5 patch after significant time has passed to make sound decisions in the balance changes is the best choice. Nobody liked NRS patching methodology and even they stopped patching frequently.
But the biggest issue I have with the implications of frequent patching is that, using Akuma as an example again - if he was released and received poorly, under the misconception that he was weak and buffed to compensate making him extremely strong - Capcom are now in a position where they have to nerf him, and he may never be in a good spot again because they now have to play a give/take game over the course of the next few patches to fix their initial balancing error. We could use Chun as an example of this - incredibly strong, nerfed to make amends to balance, has trouble finding her place again due to heavy nerfs.
Again, use any MOBA as an example, most pro players are in constant disarray with the gamestates of their MOBAs because they’re ever changing. I believe DOTA has a formula with one single balance patch a year, and then bug fix patches/minor changes throughout the rest. S3 did have small balance changes throughout the year, Akuma received nerfs etc.
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The season 3 meta was established within a month of each patch. No one went overlooked. If sfv were a game with more depth I’d be inclined to agree but this game has a very rigid design philosophy. We get the same characters at the top and bottom from March until December
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Yeah fighting games don’t work like mobas and such where changing values monthly leads to the best kind of meta . There was only complaints during the one year they tried that with KI.
Letting the game mostly rock other than a couple patches a year is a good deal overall. We see that despite whining about nerfs Rashid can win the most qualifying event of the year and a character who hasn’t won much shit throughout the year got second. Whereas the top 3 most complained about characters didn’t even show up in top 8 and not one single Cammy top 8d Evo.
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MK9 also had a rigid design philosophy, but frequent patching literally killed it’s scene.
Developers forcibly creating their own metas via frequent patching is incredibly bad game design, we might start with a poorly balanced vanilla version but slowly released patches that fully take into account the prior years patch slowly knit together the cast into a state of balance. S3 top tiers were eerily similar to S2 top tiers, because they didn’t need to destroy anybody at the top. Just slowly bring up the characters below bit by bit.
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Mobas are 5x5, with it’s A LOT more than 4 interactions. The implications of changing even can be massive and meta changing. Mobas like Dota 2 can be as complex if not more so than any 1v1 fighting game.
Having said that, patching twice a year is good for us.
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Sorry I should have worded it differently.
A champion in a MOBA only has 4 abilities that are reviewed for balance. An FG character has anywhere from 20 to 40.
It’s much harder to balance, especially on a frequent scale.
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I grind the the fuck outta league of legends. Hell no to frequent patches for fighting games.
It’s irritating as fuck keeping with the patch log for 100+. Even if 30-40 on fighting games would piss me off. I’m cool with 2 times a year.
Yeah I took a break from LoL for 3 months and came back to a completely different game. It’s horrible. Just imagining that for any FG I play makes me wince.
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Lmao! Sounds good! I should be on later tonight, if you’re around. But I’m pretty much off after tomorrow until the new year so we should have lots of time.
being famous is for people who don’t make fighting game videos on youtube so I am not too worried about that.
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You keep saying frequent. Im saying 3 or 4. One more minimum. No way it turns the game into mk9. Mk9 is an extreme example of patches done wrong. What im hearing is a variation of the slippery slope argument mixed with “beliefs”.
What i would need to hear is a real life reason why a third late season patch is a worse reality of the current 2 patch system
3 would mean every 3 1/2 months, 4 would be every 3 months.
That’s too short a timeframe, as I said. You’re barely getting through 3 majors between balance patches. 2 a year, 6 months inbetween for a .5.
Reasons above are more than enough -
It stagnates meta growth
It’s a bad environment for players to play within due to the mental depth of FGs, not comparable to Fortnite changes
Balance misconceptions can break characters, putting them in limbo for a very long time - i.e Chun, Ryu
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But we understand the meta in less time than that. We are at the point in this games life where we have things figured out in about a month. Especially without new mechanics. The top 5-6 characters and bottom 3-4 were known by final round and it didn’t change.
3.5 months sounds perfect
It took Menat a very long time to be explored enough to be considered super busted, when she released she was very similar to how she is now with the exception of her explosion. That’s almost a full year of tech making up her tier placement.
We all know Cammy is strong because she’s simplistic, that doesn’t mean the same for every character in the game. Akuma was also slept on for months until Tokido showed what he was capable of. Ryu was overnerfed in S2 with the misconception of what he was strong for and now he’s been in a bad place since. Nash has been stuck in limbo after nerfs were made too severely, too early in the games life cycle. We can look back and easily see the game didn’t have enough time to age before that S2 balance patch, because a lot of characters we’d consider mediocre in this current meta have been brought down to niche viability and are struggling due to those initial nerfs.
You can argue we understood the meta, but people have been wrong many times in the games lifespan. Faster patching creates more Ryus if Capcom make a poor balancing decision.
For instance - take Zeku
A character widely considered bottom 5 for a very long time, even after his S3 balance changes. Towards the end of the season, pro players and people here are thinking he’s top 10. If we had a balance patch every 3 months, that’s two patches Zeku would have gone through where people thought he was initially weak - would he have been overbuffed in that timespan? And in the instance he was overbuffed, and then promptly nerfed, how long is he going to be in a bad state due to those nerfs? Is he going to drop down to S2 Ryus viability? What are the consequences of the initial balance mistake?
Blanka also, a character considered very underwhelming at release - end of season considered top 10, and is now most certainly top 10.
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I get what you mean. But it must almost have been intentional the way some characters were left unleashed for 1 or even 2-3 years.
It was always obvious with Cammy and Guile and to a lesser extent Abigail and Akuma.